It’s starting to feel like a bad Quote of the Day calendar. We’re constantly encountering news about a newspaper that is scaling back, moving entirely online or shutting down completely.

Metro Detroiters are still adjusting to the idea that the Detroit News and Detroit Free Press will no longer deliver a print product to subscribers every day. In July we will bid goodbye to the Ann Arbor News in print as it slides into an online-only format at AnnArbor.com. Publications like the Bay City Times, Flint Journal and Saginaw News will cut printing back to three days a week. Salaries and benefits are on the line for employees at the Kalamazoo Gazette, Grand Rapids Press, Jackson Citizen-Patriot and Muskegon Chronicle.

Those newspapers that are still meagerly surviving seem to be gasping for breath. Publications like The Royal Oak Tribune and the Observer & Eccentric Newspapers closed their own buildings to relocate ever-shrinking staff members into other existing offices – in most cases those brick-and-mortar shops are many miles from the neighborhoods, schools, people and businesses these community publications cover. For close to a decade print media has been doing more with less, cutting staff and still getting a newspaper to your door.

We wondered, what kind of impact does this have at the community at large? Here’s what we found:

Bloggers will cheer. According to AmblerMedia.com online media stands to reap the benefits. As newspapers close, advertising online is expected to increase 129 percent over the next five years. See http://tinyurl.com/cf8xoj.

Communities could suffer. Blogger Douglas McLennan points to a study of the impact the Cincinnati Post’s closing has had on the city since 2007. According to the Princeton study, fewer candidates ran for municipal office, incumbents became more likely to win re-election, and voter turnout fell. Visit http://tinyurl.com/cddnve.

Readers claim they don’t mind. The Pew Research Center for People and the Press released weekly survey results March 12 that showed less than half of Americans, 43 percent, believe losing their local newspaper would hurt civic life. More people relied on television for local news than any other source. See http://tinyurl.com/agy3h3.

But the landscape of news will change. The loss and cutbacks in print newspapers means fewer reporters covering specific beats – fewer watchdogs overseeing government, fewer people to promote the arts and to highlight business openings. There will be far less in-depth coverage of news that impacts the community – like school closings and tax increases. Read what Blogger Tony Rogers had to say at http://tinyurl.com/ch7e7l.

We hope that sense of journalistic dedication, objectivity and unbiased reporting will translate, live and thrive online. How much do you value your newspaper?