The current financial crisis will forever change a number of industries in the U.S. The financial industry, of course. The real estate industry, also. And the automotive industry, maybe—as we’ve seen with the “Big Three” U.S. auto-makers on the brink of bankruptcy.

But there’s another industry, or rather industry sector, that is on the point of falling victim to the slumping economy engendered by the financial crisis: The print newspaper sector.

While the financial crisis is not the cause of print newspapers’ aches—most U.S. newspapers have been losing ad dollars ever since Craigslist and others started offering online classifieds—it might be what causes the first large metro dailies to, literally, stop the presses.

News surfaced on Newspaper Death Watch last week that the Detroit Free Press and the Detroit News are considering paring back publishing schedules and moving most of their operations online. A number of magazines in the past few years had already canceled print issues to become online-only, including InfoWorld, Red Herring and The Industry Standard. But this had so far never happened to any major metro dailies. 

So, what does this all mean for the communications industry? It means that the media landscape is changing and that we need to adapt to a world where digital media are increasingly important, where video is a more widely-used medium and where providing interesting, accurate information fast is even more important than before.

Increased fragmentation makes our jobs as marketing communications professionals more difficult but the plethora of new communications channels also provides great opportunity. Understanding how to use these new channels is key to remaining competitive as communications professionals and will allow the truly innovative ones to stand out from the rest.