As newspaper companies continue to file for bankruptcy, media professionals are looking for ways to reinvent the newspaper business. Jeff Jarvis, the director of the Interactive Journalism program at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, blogs about the future of newspapers and in December, offered his advice for the industry. He points out that many newspapers are going into bankruptcy and leaning on their debt, when they should be taking this as an opportunity to reinvent themselves and rely on entrepreneurship.

Currently, newspaper companies are restructuring their debts instead of replacing management who had failed to make strategic decisions to remain profitable. “If these companies took just one or two papers each among their 66 to experiment with new models, to radically rethink and resize them, and to learn instead of demolishing their old institutions brick by brick, they and their still-dying industry would be much better off, ”said Jarvis in a 2009 Faster Times article.

In recent years, newspapers’ advertising and subscription revenue have been cut due to the rise of online sites that allow people to read news and advertise for free. Print advertising, the main source of income for major newspaper companies has plummeted in the past four years.

According to the Newspaper Association of America, since 2005 the industry’s annual ad sales have dropped by more than $20 billion, causing a 40 percent decline.

For established newspaper companies to remain sustainable, Jarvis proposes they start acting like entrepreneurs, ““bravely facing the new realities and making bold moves to utterly transform themselves.” In his blog, Jarvis lists options for newspaper companies currently facing bankruptcy as well as the business models he believes are “remedies.”

Some of his options include: staying in print but splitting up the functions of the company and outsourcing anything possible, investing in a distributed network of independent local and interest sites with the company adding value with curation and sales, and creating a pure ad network.

“News companies must find a way to charge for news distributed online,” said Joshua Mills, journalism department professor. According to Mills, an antitrust waiver from Congress would allow publishers to conspire to charge for news online.

Impremedia, the largest Spanish-language publishers and one of the few to shrink by outsourcing and eliminating efficiencies, are currently implementing a strategy of putting digital first. Its CEO, John Paton, has outsourced its print products of La Opinion in Los Angeles, the nation’s biggest Spanish-language daily, and El Diario La Prensa, the oldest Spanish-language daily in the United States.

Editor and Publisher, a print and digital based company today holds 42 percent fewer employees and the company produces more than 97 products on seven robust platforms of web, widgets, mobile, TV/video, audio, social media and print. “Newspapers cannot be profitable until they shed their production and distribution costs  that is, printing and delivering the paper,” said Mills. “No amount of cutting the staff will do that.”