Mark Scott of Business Week notes that the British are not taking the declining numbers of daily print newspaper readers -- and the dropping ad revenues -- lying down. Young people, as the old adage goes, don't read newspapers. So what is a paper to do? Gloomy, Spenglerian meditations on the nature of decline won't change the reality of the situation, which, for print journos, is dire.

Since English is the lingua franca on a globalized internet, the great American and British newspapers have a unique opportunity to offset readership declines in their print editions with an aggressive online strategy. From Business Week:

''According to the London-based Audit Bureau of Circulations, domestic British newspaper circulation during the six-month period from February, 2007, to July, 2007, fell 3.31% vs. a year earlier. But Web site traffic is on the upswing. Guardian Unlimited, for instance, the online portal for Britain's The Guardian newspaper, pulled in 16 million unique users globally in May, 2007, up 10.3% from a year earlier and a solid 122% higher than four years ago.

''Even more impressive, nearly 6 million of the Guardian's visitors came from the U.S., compared with 4.4 million from Britain. 'The strategy is to use the Web site to become a global brand,’ with 4.4 million from Britain. 'The strategy is to use the Web site to become a global brand, says Carolyn McCall, chief executive of the Guardian Media Group, the parent company of The Guardian newspaper.''