In this increasingly impoverished age, there are sales declines and then there are sales declines.

Welcome to the cash-starved world of the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder. While other media outlets struggle with sales down 20 percent, or a third, the 75-year-old African American paper has seen sales plummet between 50 and 60 percent, says publisher Tracey Williams-Dillard.

The weekly, once 16-20 pages, has been cut in half, and Dillard recently sent word to a half-dozen or so freelancers that they would no longer be paid ... though they could work for free.

"While we of course continue to need stories, columns and photos for our newspaper, we will have to rely largely on voluntary submissions and other unpaid sources for our news and information until the financial outlook improves," read the email.

Asked about the chances that the Spokesman-Recorder will be around for its 76th year (the 75th anniversary is in December), Williams-Dillard says, "100 percent. That's why we're making such drastic cuts now."

Although the Spokesman-Recorder still gets major advertising from corporations such as Rainbow Foods, smaller advertisers have basically fallen off the map. Not all of those are small businesses, however; Williams-Dillard says many health providers advertised products such as Medicare plans until recently.

"That industry is doing well. You'd think they'd still be advertising," she says.

Although there's some evidence that smaller papers are faring better than debt-saddled corporate ones, plenty have gone belly-up. The Bridge, a well-respected Southeast Minneapolis paper that went online-only in April, was mothballed last week after raising just a quarter of its vastly reduced monthly budget.

So it's not just a Spokesman-Recorder thing, and may not fully represent the state of the local black press. Insight News CEO Al McFarlane says he has not cut his editorial budget this past year, his many institutional advertisers are still on board, and readers still pick up 30,000 or so copies.

Of course, McFarlane acknowledges that he writes much of the copy, while the Spokesman-Recorder still pays three editors who can write, plus staff writer Charles Hallman and frequent contributor Dwight Hobbes.

McFarlane may be the better entrepreneur and salesman — Insight's website makes no bones that its business mission is "providing preferred access to Black consumers for businesses, agencies, and organizations."

However, the CEO says the black press should've grown more given Minnesota's 10-fold increase in African-Americans since he founded Insight News in 1974.

"We follow the black population wherever it goes — into the suburbs, wherever," McFarlane says. "We have a much bigger black middle class now than we've ever had."

Still, Williams-Dillard is keeping alive the spirit of her grandfather, Cecil Newman, who founded the Spokesman-Recorder 40 years earlier. Her paper arguably relies more on reporting (as opposed to corporate and institutional press releases) and upsets more applecarts.

While she has no doubts about survival, Williams-Dillard has a message familiar to many in the journalism world these days: "We encourage all supporters to support the paper — anyone who is interested in keeping our community covered."