On December 1, the Quad-City Times ran 29 square inches of copy on the not-for-profit organization Skills Inc. shutting down at the end of the year. The Rock Island Argus ran an eight-square-inch brief on its front page.

This can be seen as a microcosm of the Quad Cities' two daily newspapers. A River Cities' Reader analysis found that last week, the Quad-City Times devoted 80 percent more space to local news content than the twin Illinois papers, the Rock Island Argus and the Moline Dispatch.

For the week of November 29 to December 5, the Times had 91 articles, editorials, and columns written by staff members or Lee Enterprises bureau reporters concerning local and state issues and news, totaling 2,300 square inches. The Argus/Dispatch had 69 such articles, totaling 1,274 square inches.

Including letters to the editor, the Times had more local news content each day last week than the Argus or Dispatch. Outside of Saturday's paper -- in which the amount of local news content was nearly the same -- each day the Times devoted at least 23 percent more space to local news content than the Argus/Dispatch did. On Monday, the Quad-City Times featured 307 square inches of local news content; the Argus/Dispatch had 30 -- all letters to the editor.

Denver's Rocky Mountain News closed in February. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer published its last print edition on Tuesday, and the threat of closure has been levied against the San Francisco Chronicle - which lost more than $1 million a week last year.

Earlier this month, Time magazine identified the "10 major newspapers that will either fold or go digital next."

And the Associated Press summarized in a March 15 article: "Four newspaper companies, including the owners of the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune and The Philadelphia Inquirer, have sought Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in recent months."

On June 2, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is expected to approve new rules dealing with the ownership of daily newspapers and broadcast-media outlets. These changes could dramatically alter the media landscape in the country, just as the Telecommunications Act of 1996 has resulted in the concentration of ownership of radio stations.

In 1998, David Glass, the chief operating officer of Wal-Mart, outlined his company's objective: "First we dominate North America, then South America, then Europe and Asia." If Glass had been speaking of any other enterprise, his words might have seemed far-fetched.