Book excerpt: "In The Vanishing Newspaper, Philip Meyer offers the newspaper industry a business model for preserving and stabilizing the social responsibility functions of the press in a way that could outlast technology-driven changes in media forms. This "influence model," as it is termed by Meyer, is based on the premise that a newspaper's main product is not news or information, but influence: societal influence, which is not for sale, and commercial influence, which is. Meyer's model explores how the former enhances the value of the latter." "Meyer has written this volume to be accessible to a wide audience, taking particular care to explain his statistical research and methodology. Teachers and students of journalism and business will find Meyer's research, as well as his interviews with newspaper company executives and analysts, of particular interest."--BOOK JACKET.