They are calling in the dreaded consultants up in Minneapolis, where the former Knight Ridder flagship the Star Tribune continues to bleed out. This internal memo has the details, including the cost centers the paper is trying to tame:

Despite all the cost-cutting, our payroll and benefits in 2007 were actually $10 million higher than they were in 2000, while total revenue had declined over $90 million in the same period. Payroll and benefits are well over half of all our cash operating expenses; the remaining cash costs are newsprint and everything else. Newsprint is the only one of the three major categories where we’ve had a meaningful drop in expenses, and that’s mostly because of a substantial drop in the price we pay per ton. Unfortunately, that price is going way up in 2008. All other cash expenses combined (utilities, office supplies, all the other things it takes to keep us operating) are at almost exactly the same level today as they were in 2000.

As a result of rapidly declining revenue – and expenses that haven’t been cut anywhere nearly as fast – our operating cash flow has declined dramatically since 2000. Operating cash flow, which is the cash we have left after paying cash expenses, and which we then use to invest in everything from new equipment and computers to new products, and to pay our debt, has declined 50 percent in just the past two years and more than that since 2000.

Uh, this is not just handwriting on the wall, it is a billboard on the interstate.