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The Boston Globe is losing $1-million (U.S.) a week, and its owner, The New York Times Co., has put it up for sale, although some analysts doubt the paper has any net worth.

The Times itself is being propped up with a $250-million loan it negotiated at 14-per-cent interest, and because it sold and leased back part of its grandiose new headquarters. David Carr, who writes about media for the Times, recently estimated the loan and sale-leaseback “probably have given it the wherewithal to operate into 2011.”

McClatchy Co., which owns more than two dozen papers across the U.S., including the Miami Herald, effectively defaulted on its debt in May. It's being kept alive only because it negotiated a new loan at 15.75-per-cent interest.

The Philadelphia Inquirer, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times and many other U.S. dailies are in bankruptcy. Twenty-three thousand newspaper jobs have been lost in the United States over the past 18 months. The average share price of an American newspaper company fell by 83 per cent in 2008.

This newspaper's prospects are considerably healthier. The Globe and Mail, as a national newspaper, is not heavily reliant on classified advertising, which evaporated with the advent of Craigslist and the like.

The Globe has also still been spared the savage budget cuts that eviscerated so many once-great American newspapers as the recession accelerated chronic declines in readership and advertising revenue.

But in the U.S., it's time to ask: How will the seemingly inevitable extinction of many metropolitan daily newspapers influence politics and political culture there?

The answer isn't entirely grim. Some newspapers are bound to survive in print form, at least for a few more years, as competition thins and enlightened corporate owners recognize that laying off half their reporters is the surest way to destroy the only thing of value a newspaper has: the reputation behind its name.

Newspapers everywhere are experimenting with efforts to convince advertisers and readers to use their online platforms. Someone may eventually figure out a formula that generates both readers and revenue.

And new forums are emerging, as online providers rush to fill the void left by desiccated newsrooms and empty bureaus. Here in Washington, Politico is just one of several new or expanded websites breaking stories about congressional and White House shenanigans. (Politico also has a print edition.) In other cities, journalists are creating websites that offer in-depth coverage of municipal affairs.

But there is another, very disturbing, trend. A recent survey by The Pew Center for the People and the Press reported that “a new Washington media have evolved, but they are far from the more egalitarian or citizen-based media that advocates of the digital age might imagine. Instead, this new Washington media cohort is one substantially aimed at elites, often organized by industry, by corporate client, or by niche political interest.”

These publications may have an audience of a few thousand, or even a few hundred, willing to pay thousands of dollars in subscription fees for specialized coverage. “These are publications with names like ClimateWire, Energy Trader, Traffic World, Government Executive and Food and Chemical News,” the Pew study says. They are proliferating, and hoovering up reporters and editors who have lost their jobs in mainstream media. “Today, it is the niche, not the mainstream, media that [provide] blanket coverage of Congress and other important arms of the federal government,” the Pew report concludes.

The collapse of print journalism - network newscasts are also in terrible shape - threatens to bifurcate the public square. Those who know the power of information will pay to obtain it, and use that knowledge to influence the agenda.

Those who lack the means or interest will depend on blogs, social networking and whatever information they choose to look for online. How does democracy survive on that?

There's no need to panic, yet. You know the value of a newspaper, what its loss would mean to your life and your community. Someone, somewhere is going to figure out a way to deliver that product profitably again, although right now she may be busy studying for her exams.

In the meantime, this newspaper, at least, is not going anywhere.