Survivor of two world wars faces biggest battle

Saw this in the Times, thought it was a good analysis.
The Scott Trust will defend the Guardian at all costs. We've seen what has happened to the Salford Advertiser with possible worse to come in the future as advertising moves more and more online as well as easy access to news & sport coverage.
Young people don't read newspapers, they get their info through the internet and in future on their mobile phone. Newspapers may die out and be replaced by weekly news magazines. We're entering a new era, but what future for journalists?

Survivor of two world wars faces biggest battle

Dan Sabbagh: Analysis

It may have survived the Napoleonic wars, as well as the First and Second, but so serious is the advertising downturn, and the migration of advertising online, that The Observer, which is 218 years old, may not last much longer. The collapse in revenue is affecting every publisher and they must now rely on the size of their balance sheets for support.
Data collected by the Newspaper Marketing Association illustrate the gravity of the problem. Its figures are based on actual returns from publishers. Display advertising at quality dailies was down by 23 per cent in the four months to April and classified, once a stream of pure profit, was down 33 per cent. But if that sounds vicious, consider the figures for the Sundays, where the declines are 32 per cent and 42 per cent respectively.
Consumers have less shopping time available on a Sunday — so an under-pressure advertiser is more likely to concentrate its spending on a Saturday newspaper, when there is a whole weekend of shopping possibilities ahead. No wonder then that both The Observer and The Sunday Telegraph have been partly integrated into their daily sisters.
The recession is so severe though, that the initial cost savings have proven to be not enough. None of Britain’s quality titles are making a profit in the current environment, but the pressure is greatest on The Independent titles, with a parent company that is weighed down by €1.4 billion (£1.2 billion) of debt. The Observer had been thought to be relatively immune, because its parent company, Guardian Media Group (GMG), has about £280 million of cash available. But with losses of £61 million, and profits tied up in paying down debt in other investments, there is little cash coming in.
Unless there is another motive. A warning that The Observer could close will help to concentrate minds at the heavily unionised GMG, perhaps helping to make dramatic savings that will stop venerable Sundays coming to a full stop.