Following rapidly on the heels of The Brandon Reporter’s suspension of activity comes word from The Hinesburg Record of a move designed to save it from extinction.The Record has announced it will discontinue its monthly print edition and pursue a digital-only strategy as a weekly.

The nonprofit’s Board cited multiple reasons, some familiar and some perhaps less so. Printing papers consumed three-quarters of its budget; more and more people are getting their news online; and delivery had become increasingly problematic due to the decline of the U.S. Postal Service: “Many residents get The Record 10 days to two weeks after it is supposed to arrive,” the Board wrote.

This decision illustrates one of the many unanswered questions facing local news outlets: To print… or not to print?

There’s the cost, obviously. Printing a newspaper isn’t cheap. And distribution is a headache if you’re not depending on USPS; it’s pretty much a DIY operation, which is a substantial burden on short-staffed newsrooms.

But even in our digital age, being in print has inarguable advantages. A print paper is a much more attractive proposition to advertisers than a digital product. In a real newspaper, the ads are interspersed with the content. And newspapers tend to stick around the house, increasing the chances that an advertisement will be noticed.

A print edition also heightens the paper’s presence in community life. If it’s on a rack at libraries, stores, restaurants, and coffee shops, people will see it and be reminded that it’s a thing that exists. At the digital-only Hardwick Gazette, we’re painfully aware that many potential readers simply don’t know we’re still around. We’d like to return to print someday, but we’d have to be absolutely sure that the cost would be more than covered by increased ad sales.

And we’d have to have a distribution model that isn’t centered on the trunk of our publisher’s car.

There’s also an emotional element to the question. They are called “newspapers,” after all. I’m sure there’s a sense of loss among The Record’s merry band of folks at leaving the world of print.

On the other hand, what are the economics of a digital-only product? How do you generate enough revenue — from ad sales, reader support, and grant funding — to keep the lights on and your staffers paid? The digital realm has its drawbacks for advertisers, but it also creates new opportunities. For example, if you send a weekly rundown to any reader who’s on your email list, why not sell a sponsorship for the rundown? If you provide audio versions of your stories for people who like to listen rather than read, can you begin each audio story with a brief sponsorship message?

You know what would be nice? If there was an academic institution with the capability of doing research into questions like these. Maybe an academic institution that’s home to a “center for community news,” devoted to fostering journalism in a digital world. Such a center could do the work of identifying best practices for media outlets and providing badly-needed roadmaps to sustainability. What’s the real cost/benefit situation? How have some newspapers managed to make print succeed — or make a go of it as a purely digital operation? How do different markets and missions influence your revenue strategies? What are the steps you should take, and what pitfalls must be avoided?

Oh wait, I’m being told that the University of Vermont is, in fact, the home of something called — what do you know? — the Center for Community News!

If only CCN had any interest in such things. But they’re all about journalism and nothing but, and they’re supposedly training future journalists who are going to need business, financial, and fundraising skills in order to succeed professionally. CCN, and UVM’s journalism offerings as a whole, are doing their students a disservice. And they’re doing little to address the fundamental economic challenges facing journalism in the 21st Century.

Meanwhile, down here in the trenches, the future is full of promise but the present is dire. After my recent post about The Brandon Reporter, the editor of another Vermont weekly sent me an email that included this passage: “I’ve never been more burned out in my whole life… I feel overwhelmed by what I can’t seem to get to and the obligation to keep reporting and the expectations of my community to stick with this.”

There’s a lot of that going around these days. We’d best get going on the project of inventing sustainable models for journalism, because time is a luxury our editors and reporters cannot afford.