'A picture of America so dreary you half-expected the Google logarithm to place Prozac ads on the page'... (updated)

Despite the pre-election doom and gloom in the NY Times, Mark Finkelstein holds hope that the sun will rise again:

I looked around when I heard someone crying, and there was Pollyanna bawling her eyes out. That's how depressing was the one-two punch of pessimism in Paul Krugman's and Bob Herbert's New York Times pay-to-peruse columns of today.

Read NewsBusters regularly... it's media-therapy.

Update: Drudge notes that newspaper circulation is plunging and links to the NY Post bucking the trend.

"This is a great and historic day for The Post," said Rupert Murdoch, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of News Corporation, which owns The Post.

"We have created a newspaper with a unique voice that reflects the heart and soul of New York, and today's publisher's statement, which for the first time places us ahead of the Daily News and in the top five newspapers in the country, is a testament to the vitality of the paper and the cherished role it plays in the life of this city."

Here are the top 25 daily newspapers in the U.S. by circulation (with percent change) for the six-month period ending September 2006.

1. USA Today: 2,269509, (-1.3%)
2. The Wall Street Journal: 2,043235, (-1.9%)
3. The New York Times: 1,086,798, (-3.5%)
4. Los Angeles Times: 775,766, (-8.0%)
5. The New York Post: 704,011, 5.3%
6. Daily News: 693,382, 1.0%
7. The Washington Post: 656,297, (-3.3%)
8. Chicago Tribune: 576,132, (-1.7%)
9. Houston Chronicle: 508,097, (-3.6%)
10. Newsday: 413,579, (-4.9%)
11. The Arizona Republic, Phoenix: 397,294, (-2.5%)
12. The Boston Globe: 386,415, (-6.7%)
13. The Star-Ledger, Newark, N.J.: 378,100, (-5.5%)
14. San Francisco Chronicle: 373,805, (-5.3%)
15. The Star Tribune, Minneapolis: 358,887, (-4.1%)
16. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: 350,157, (-3.4%)
17. The Plain Dealer, Cleveland: 336,939, (-0.6%)
18. The Philadelphia Inquirer: 330,622, (-7.5%)
19. Detroit Free Press: 328,628, (-3.6%)
20. The Oregonian, Portland: 310,803, (-6.8%)
21. The San Diego Union-Tribune: 304,334, (-3.1%)
22. St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times: 288,676, (-3.2%)
23. The Orange County (Calif.) Register: 287,204, (-3.7%)
24. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch: 276,588, 0.6%
25. The Sacramento (Calif.) Bee: 273,609, (-5.4%)