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Message: <blockquote data-quote="occam" data-source="post: 9219887" data-attributes="member: 39815">Are you claiming that the only reason local newspapers are facing financial difficulty is because investor-focused managers are conducting unnecessary layoffs to goose stock prices? That there are no other, perhaps more fundamental, factors at work in the long-term decline of the local newspaper business?I wonder what the results of a survey here would be of people currently subscribing to a local newspaper, either in print or online? (And before the inevitable hands are raised, obviously what counts are overall numbers, not anecdotes.) I assume you're not unfamiliar with what the historical trend generally looks like. To support your case, you'd have to demonstrate that layoffs preceded poor financial performance, rather than followed it.Exactly. I won't quibble with you over whether layoffs proved the "death blow" to these companies, but the damage to them was extensive and goes way back, for reasons other than layoffs.You also haven't made the case here of "killing multiple industries", only that individual companies can fail, which happens all the time. (Although I'd probably buy an argument that generational changes are impacting broad categories of consumer goods, like toys, which is relevant to the situation at Hasbro.)</blockquote>