—Ad shrinkage: The AP said that about $11.6 billion—approximately one-fourth—of the industry’s annual advertising revenue since 2005 has been lost and staff reductions have been the main way newspapers have tried to cope. Secondly, the challenge of the blogs, which typically have much smaller staffs, have also called into the question the viability of maintaining large newsrooms. And despite the large responses to ASME’s survey, a number of media executives have been calling for newspapers to shrink their staffs if they want to survive. Last month, Thomson Reuters CEO Tom Glocer told an off-the-record (and quickly reported) gathering of new media execs that the NYT could get by with 60 reporters instead of 600-700 reporters. Of course, the news staff shortage has made services like Reuters and the AP a bit more crucial to newspapers, especially as they cut national and international coverage.

—The latest cut count: As for how things are looking this year, PaperCuts, the newspaper job loss counter, said there have been 9,162 jobs lost this year so far; in ‘08, the site said 15,970 posts were eliminated either through layoffs or buyouts.