It’s no secret that the newspaper industry is in serious trouble. The changing media landscape coupled with the economic downturn has forced the recent closure of longtime newspapers such as The Rocky Mountain News and Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Even TIME offered its predictions on the top 10 major newspapers that will fold or go digital this year including the Miami Herald and the Boston Globe.

With so many of our nation’s newspapers fighting to stay alive, many are evaluating strategies to update their medium and make it relevant for today’s consumer.

According to an article in Advertising Age, “The nation’s print media may be on life support, but some are quietly building digital portfolios again – albeit on a smaller scale – and some are starting to bear fruit. We’re not talking about the digital editions of papers themselves, but startups that take old media in new directions.” For instance, Gannett Co. Inc., a leading international news and information company which publishes 85 daily newspapers, including USA TODAY, has been busy building strategic relationships with startup companies to shift its business model and become a leader in the digital media market.

One of Gannett’s portfolio companies includes Pointroll, which powers innovative rich-media display ads on the web. Pointroll’s CEO Jason Tafler said, “The ultimate goal is to transform Gannett into a real digital leader by leveraging the strength of content and the audience that it has and extending that into the digital world.”

Gannett is not the only newspaper company to invest in startups. Hearst Interactive, Tribune, Washington Post Co., and the New York Time Co. have all dipped their toes into the water hoping to revive struggling print publications.

Interestingly, Google – who has often been blamed for contributing to the downfall of newspapers – has been on the radar in recent months revealing it considered buying a newspaper but decided against it, “to avoid crossing the line between infrastructure, technology and content.”

Either way, this move by Gannett and other newspaper companies signals the dawn of a new era in the media industry. It will be interesting to see how this plays out not only for consumers of news, but also journalists, advertisers and PR professionals. PR practitioners have already begun to shift how they disseminate news and I anticipate this will continue to evolve as media companies’ digital portfolios grow.