Via Romenesko, here's an interesting commentary by Lou Alexander on the future of the newspaper business. Alexander spent 20 years in the advertising department of the San Jose Mercury News, rising to the top jobs in both display and classified before retiring in 2004. Before turning to the business side, he was a journalist for eight years.

Writes Alexander:

Michael Socolow, a professor of American Studies and journalism program director at Brandeis University recently wrote: "Daily newspapers should drop the consultants, lower their unrealistic earnings targets and do what they do best. If they fail to do this, they will have nobody to blame for their demise but themselves."

It might be fun to fantasize about cutting newspaper margin expectations to something under 10%, but the way the world works makes it impossible. Journalists need to understand this and quit wasting time talking about it.

If the CEO of Knight Ridder, Gannett, Tribune Company or one of the other major newspaper companies announced they were going to cut margin expectation and plow massive additional money into journalism, they would set off a chain of events that would likely lead to the demise of these companies.