Alan Mutter, a media industry investment guru based in Silicon Valley, has published some stunning numbers at his blog Newsosaur on the decline in value of publicly traded newspaper companies.

The market value of the American newspaper publishers entering 2008 as independent, publicly traded companies has fallen by $23 billion, or 42 percent, since the end of 2004, Mutter reports.

Nearly half of the slide in the market capitalization of newspaper stocks came in 2007, when the shares lost a collective $11 billion, or 26 percent, of their value. Thus, newspapers lost nearly as much value last year as they did in the two prior years put together.

By Joel Kramer