Creative Loafing reports a substantial blood-letting at the AJC may be imminent.

When and how does this ever stop?

Does an online news”paper” model require such a reduction in staff?  With these layoffs, will we finally have a sustainable business model?  Right now local news is written like its a recap for the rest of the metro area and not to keep potential affected citizens informed (see: Hey Atlanta, Decatur’s reconfiguring its school system and parents are concerned!“)  At what point does the news get so watered down that people just stop reading?

Why not take a gamble and just make it a pay site?  Or at least make local news pay-only.  Keep all that AP, NY Times and WaPo stuff free.  Lord knows “The Buzz” is a right and not a privilege. Who else out there can report local news on the same scale?  In a choice between pay or nothing, which would you choose?

And what’s the worst that happens?  More layoffs?

Nothing like a post full of questions to solve the world’s problems.

Disclaimer: Be aware that I know little to nothing about newspaper business models, except that online ad revenue is a joke (funny: scared, not funny: haha) and that Craigslist is Satan reborn as free, online classifieds.