Well you were the one who originally called it a "newspaper", instead of an "escort service flier". Perhaps its not a disguise, but rather just a misrepresentation. A newspaper is more about the content, than the physical medium, though it is their adherence to the physical medium that is leading them to inevitable failure.
In Portland, and several other cities, a new publication has popped up recently called "Busted". Its printed on news-stock, and is simply page after page of mugshots along with the person's name and the offense they were arrested for. I've bought it a couple of times for $1 an issue, which is more than I've spent on actual newspapers in the last decade. Its entertaining, trying to guess the crime based on the picture, or seeing common facial traits of people arrested for possession of meth, or picking out which DUIs were still totally wasted when their picture was taken, etc.
I wouldn't call "Busted" a newspaper, but its certainly a niche publication that can survive on printed media, or at least long enough to make a quick buck before the novelty wears off. As more newspapers fail, I suspect more of these sorts of publications (Busted, Dutch escort fliers, etc) to pop up. A newspaper could offset its losses from reduced circulation by printing these small-batch publications in their off-hours. "Busted" is maybe 10 sheets, and sells for about double the price of the local Portland newspaper, which has several sections each day. The small publications are making way more money per issue, using far fewer resources, than the long-standing, "respected" publications. Newspapers, much like the horse-and-buggy and compact discs, have a limited future. By repurposing their brick-and-morter to fulfill niche markets, a small number of them can "hang on". Even vinyl records survive today; in the hands of a skilled DJ (and for douchebag "audiophiles" ;) there is no substitute.
So while your "newspaper targetting 25-35 year old males" might be thriving, it is probably not thriving on the news. News delivery is much better served by other sources.
Having said that, F News Corp. I usually turn to online editions of British news outlets for real stories. American "journalism" has gone severely downhill, particularly as the Internet has taken over. While a newspaper is no longer relevant for time-sensitive stories, the ability to disseminate information instantaneously over the Internet has greatly reduced the quality of information. In the salad days of print media, when you broke a story, your article beat the competition by at least a day. Scoop enough stories, and your paper would get a reputation for getting the news first, and circulation would increase.
If you "scoop" a story on the Internet, you might beat your competition by a matter of seconds, or maybe minutes. The old metric of getting the news first is not as important as it used to be. Quality should be more important, but the news outlets do not seem to have made that shift. By adhering to the old metrics of being first, news outlets are in a constant state of urgency, publishing rushed articles as quickly a possible. CNN, Fox, Yahoo, MSNBC, local newspaper websites, etc, all post the same AP, Reuters, and celebrity publicist news feeds verbatim as soon as they hit the wire. Instead of journalists researching information, checking facts and writing responsible articles, we simply have reporters and automated systems relaying the raw information as quickly as they possibly can without any regard for quality, accuracy or truth.
We end up with situations like the "Balloon Boy", where 15 minutes of fact checking could have saved the whole world from weeks of annoyance over what ended up as nothing. Instead we had all of the media outlets trying to get the first interviews with the family, and filling days of airtime with the same meaningless video loops, on the off chance that something might eventually happen so they could report it first. However every news outlet had reporters standing by at the same location, insuring that none of them would actually break the story first by more than milliseconds. The "news" outlets get hijacked trying to provide "better" coverage of whatever events their competition is covering, without any thought to whether or not it is worth covering. They were wasting time busy waiting for new facts instead of reporting on other things that were actually happening. When everyone is first, first doesn't matter.
A newspaper, and in fact a responsible journalist, cannot afford to waste resources like that. They absolutely cannot survive without a high signal-to-noise ratio. When nothing is happening on a story, there is nothing to report. They cannot fill an issue with endless repetition of the same 5 facts while they wait for the outcome. They need to follow the important stories, find out as much as they can about them, resolve the conflicting information, and write compelling articles before the next printing deadline. If there's nothing new on one story, they write about something else. We end up with a broad selection of high quality information that appeals to a wide audience. Unfortunately for them by the time the paper hits the newsstands or your doorstep, you've already read about it on the Internet or seen it on TV. Unfortunately for us, the Internet and TV news outlets don't have the same sort of journalistic integrity.
I think the good journalists should still be able to make it on the Internet. I appreciate their responsible research and well-developed articles much more than sensationalism and reactionary reporting. Their product is compelling. Printed newspapers are not.
