Was working on some long-term projects last week so didn't get around to blogging Dolan Media's first-quarter earnings report. Locally, the Minneapolis-based firm publishes Finance and Commerce, the St. Paul Legal Ledger and Politics in Minnesota.

While Dolan doesn't have tons of local readers, they're fun to follow because they have so many elements media prognosticators theorize are necessary to sustain the news industry.

Believe media companies must repackage information and sell the databases? Dolan effectively does that with public notices and similar financial info. Think some form of government support is needed? Dolan reaps profits from the legally mandated notices; in return, the law requires that 25 percent of a paper's news columns be "devoted to news of local interest to the community which it purports to serve."

In all likelihood, F&C and Legal Ledger journalists wouldn't have jobs without that law. And while it's very small scale (most papers double the 25 percent), and debatable (why do legal notices have to be in papers anyway?), the trade-off is evidence that government and publishers have been in bed long before the current Congressional hearings.

So onto the numbers: Dolan reported a 3.8 percent revenue drop in its Business Information Division, which is where F&C, the Legal Ledger, and PIM live. These days, that's terrific for any media company. So how did they pull this off?

One component is ad sales. Yes, display and classified revenues were off by double digits, just as at most other titles nationwide. But the 16.3 percent decline compares favorably to industry peers; the Wall Street Journal's was down 33 percent, and I suspect the Star Tribune and Pioneer Press would trade their drops for Dolan's.

What got Dolan close to the black was a classic counter-cyclical strategy. In an economic collapse, what's one of the few growth areas in advertising? Foreclosure notices, which rose 6.2 percent over a year earlier. Presumably, when the economy rebounds, foreclosure listings will dry up, but business display ads and classifieds should come back.

Dolan faces the same print-to-online revenue threat everyone else does, albeit with that government backstop. By the way, the government doesn't require advertisers to go with Dolan; they do because the papers' small circulation keeps cost low.

(In fact, another area the company saved money was printing fewer pages and papers. But the company also notes its order-taking systems are highly efficient and its admin costs have always been tightly controlled.)

Dolan's true ace in the hole is that it is really only partly a media company; its biggest, fastest-growing and most profitable division provides direct services to lawyers. (In this, Dolan is a little like the Washington Post Company, which is much more about profitable education-testing services than its troubled newspaper.)

Thanks to those professional services, Dolan's earnings per share rose 36.5 percent from a year earlier. Its stock, which was under three bucks a share at Thanksgiving, closed at $14.08 Friday.

The question for readers is whether Dolan will truly ramp up its local journalism.

Fourteen months ago, Dolan purchased Politics in Minnesota, heralding grand plans for a state Capitol news franchise, part of a nationwide network mixing free and subscriber-only content. PIM publisher Sarah Janecek astutely grabbed Steve Perry as a legislative correspondent (his tax coverage has been outstanding). Still, no other recognizable names have come on board, making the revolution a bit disappointing.

Perhaps internalizing that, Janecek steadfastly refused to detail coming attractions when I called her last week, but she sounds as excited as she did a year ago embarking on her journey into corporate America. Let's face it; last year wasn't the greatest for investing in new content — but I hope next year I'm not writing about unfulfilled promise at what may be our most successful local media company.