Just when it seemed like it couldn’t get worse for the newspaper industry, it did. Makes me glad I’m a totally 1337 bl0gg3r!:

Even for an industry awash in bad news, the newspaper business went through one of its most severe retrenchments in recent memory last week. Half a dozen newspapers said they would slash payrolls, one said it would outsource all its printing, and Tribune Co., one of the biggest publishers in the country, said it might sell its iconic headquarters tower in Chicago and the building that houses the Los Angeles Times.

The increasingly rapid and broad decline in the newspaper business in recent months has surprised even the most pessimistic financial analysts, many of whom say it’s too hard to tell how far the slump will go.

“They’re in survival mode now,” said Mike Simonton, a media analyst at Fitch Ratings, a credit-analysis agency.

But don’t feel too bad for those old cigar chomping newpaper execs in their soon-to-be-sold big city highrises. This whole thing is their own fault anyway:

Some say complacency in the industry about the threat the Internet posed is to blame for the current quagmire. Speaking on the CNBC business-news cable channel Friday, Sam Zell, the real estate magnate who is now Tribune’s CEO, said newspapers historically have been “monopolies” in their local markets and “insulated from reality,” according to a transcript of his remarks provided by CNBC.