Once-strong newspaper companies such as McClatchy (MNI) and Gannett (GCI) have cut staff as advertising revenue and circulation continue to tumble. McClatchy publishes newspapers in California and Florida, 2 states pounded by the real estate downturn, and could be delisted from the New York Stock Exchange because its stock recently fetched $0.55 a share. Gannett publishes about 85 daily papers including USA Today and the Detroit Free Press, which recently announced that a scaled-down print version will be home delivered only 3 days a week. So far, neither company has threatened to close a big city newspaper.

Privately held Hearst says it will close the Seattle Post-Intelligencer if a buyer can’t be found. Other regional newspapers are up for sale, including the Rocky Mountain News in Denver, the Austin American-Statesman in Texas and the San Diego Union-Tribune in California. But who needs them?

It’s hard to imagine anyone buying the Chronicle, even if credit were available, because there’s nothing to reverse the continued slide in circulation and advertising. The San Francisco paper has attempted to buy or share operations with a competing Bay Area newspaper twice since 2000, but anti-trust concerns blocked the deals. With extinction looming, the US Justice Department might bless a merger or combining production and distribution with privately held MediaNews Group, publisher of the Oakland Tribune and San Jose Mercury.

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MediaNews is a lean operation. The San Jose paper, once a must-read in the Silicon Valley for its technology coverage, is now thin, trivial and close to unreadable. If the Chronicle hooks up with MediaNews in some fashion, it’s almost certainly the end of it stable of star columnists, off-beat stories and zippy sports coverage. It could be a death spiral: There will be less reason to read the dying paper and this will lead to further erosion of circulation and advertising.

It’s unclear who will cover local news if the San Francisco Chronicle and other regional papers fold. Companies like TheAlternativePress.com and Google’s (GOOG) Patch have emerged in New Jersey to fill the void after the Newark Star-Ledger slashed about 40% of its editorial staff.

Google is hungry for content and could provide targeted local news to communities across the nation, allowing the Internet giant to serve local ads to individual readers. Newspapers had little success in capturing community ads despite numerous so-so attempts to tap the market through local news inserts pegged to specific towns or neighborhoods. Google’s technology may allow it to capture millions in ad revenue from mom-and-pop operations. That would be a coup.

There’s an endless supply of college kids with freshly minted degrees in English, history, journalism and other signs of squandered tuition looking for work and this would allow Google to keep editorial costs at its local news websites low, while providing wall-to-wall coverage of a town. Many kids eager to launch a writing career would happily work for peanuts and bylines. And when they outgrow it, there’s a fresh batch of hopefuls every June.
The collapse of regional newspapers might create an opening for The Associated Press, a news cooperative owned by its member newspapers. The wire service has shrewdly made itself less dependent on print media for revenue and might be able to provide increased local and regional coverage if there’s a market for it.

The demise of newspapers is heartbreaking for we ink-stained wretches, but, in the digital age, few notice their passing - and fewer will care, because the dinosaurs are irrelevant.

William Randolph Hearst, who built his fortune on newspapers, soon will be unknown to most students. Those watching Citizen Kane for the first time will have to do a little research first - on the Internet, of course.