S-L SOL? Maybe not.

According to John Koblin’s piece in yesterday’s New York Observer.

“Last year we faced a specific situation in which we told our employees that if certain things did not happen, we would close the The Star-Ledger,” he said. “The things we said needed to be accomplished were accomplished.”

That’s wonderful news, but it doesn’t stop the bleeding. Can New Jersey’s largest paper sustain itself in this grim climate with such a diminished newsroom?

“We’re not the paper we were and we’re not the paper we want to be,” said Kevin Whitmer, the new editor of The Star-Ledger, who is replacing Jim Willse. “But comparatively, and when you look at online and video, there are more people seeing our content today than at any point in our history.”

This is ultimately the conundrum faced by every paper, large or small, in the country—more people are reading content online, but the eyeballs are not translating to dollars. There’s also the perception, thanks to narrower coverage, fewer stories and smaller staffs, that papers just don’t matter anymore.

Do New Jersyans think New Yorkers get a secret thrill when things go bad?

S-L staff SOL?

Many are, according to this piece in the New York Times‘ “Media Decoder” column, which reports that another round of buyouts are in the offing, on top of the 150 from the past year, about 40 percent of the total newsroom.

Although the memo carried the subject line of “voluntary” buyout offers, there was the sound of a gun being cocked further into the narrative. Like all regional newspapers, The Star-Ledger has suffered from circulation declines, the loss of classifieds and a reduction in display ads as a result of retail consolidation and a brutal broader economy. Despite talk of recovery elsewhere, the news at The Star-Ledger sounds pretty grim, and the region that Mr. Willse once called “a game preserve of corruption” will now have even less reporting to hold its officials accountable.