The newspaper business by its nature is one in which secrets don't stay secrets very long, and the new big secret can be expressed in one word: local. That's local as in local, local and local.

After decades in which local news was supplanted by national and international stories, newspapers all across America are returning to their more humble roots, covering school board meetings and rotary lunches and high school swim meets.

In terms of news coverage, it's the biggest thing to sweep through newsrooms in decades, and it's part of a fundamental reevaluation of the newspaper's role in the community.

But the change also reflects some new and often bitter business-side realities: The profit-rich monopolies long enjoyed by so many papers are now under ferocious attack, and it seems to be coming from all sides: the internet, alternative weeklies, lifestyle monthlies and the very real threat of invasion by new dailies, such as the Examiner chain, now in Washington, San Francisco and Baltimore.

It's only going to get worse. In the coming several years, local newspapers can expect to see their circulations tumble even further, and by as much as 25 percent, according to one forecast. And while publishers have been slashing newsroom staffs, sending thousands of writers and editors into the streets, those cuts will not be enough.

The American newspaper is being forced to reinvent itself.

Virtually every major paper is making the shift to local coverage, often as it cuts deeper into editorial operations. Only recently, the Dallas Morning News announced it was closing its national bureaus while cutting 20 percent of its newsroom staff. It was becoming a local paper again after several decades of rising stature for its national and international coverage. More than 100 people were let go.

Similar, if less dramatic, changes are taking place at such papers as The Washington Post, New Jersey's Bergen Record and Herald News, and the Richmond Times Dispatch. And joining them all is Gannett, the largest newspaper chain and publisher of USA Today.

"We're going to get hyper-local," says Tara Connell, a Gannett spokesperson.

The hitch in all this would seem to be cost. Local news is expensive. It means having teams of reporters on the street covering the most mundane sort of news. But editors say they're going to do it without adding people.

"There are some areas where we'll have to move some more people into local news but we can do what we need to do with the staff that we have," says Bob Mong, editor of The Dallas Morning News.

Ditto for Gannett, says Connell. "The whole concept is to do this without any change in resources, without reductions or increases," Connell says.

"We have said, turn this ship around and change the way we gather and disseminate information. You have a lot of people in newspapers doing things readers don't want. We want to change to provide information readers do want."

Papers are also launching new offshoot publications, sometimes going head-to-head with the long-established alternative papers. They're also experimenting with niche publications. And of course there's the internet, a vast if poorly understood venue to experiment with new ways to draw in and hold local readers.

For a paper like the Bergen Record, local coverage is familiar territory, serving as it does some 70 towns within its own country and dozens more in outlying counties. Years ago, the Record was almost exclusively a local paper, with eight regional editions each day and a newsroom staff of some 200. Nary a night meeting was missed.

So it is again.

"Our focus is very local. We like to cover the world in our backyard,"  says editor Frank Scandale. "We like to say, more Glenrock, less Gaza. The people who read us want to know what's going on in North Jersey but with context.

"There's also nothing like seeing your kid's name in the paper. We're trying to reflect people's lives. It may not sound sexy and it's not, but it's about being efficient and being in tune with what readers want."

Ultimately, it's about making the Record a better business proposition, says Scandale. "It's all about developing eyeballs for advertisers."

Wall Street sees sense in that. The whole idea, observes longtime Merrill Lynch media analyst Lauren Rich Fine, is for papers to create unique and defensible positions against the rise of competitors.

"I think newsrooms are being redirected, so it won't necessarily lead to more hiring. I suspect they will experiment with user-generated content and with micro-local web sites where they can edit the content for print," she says

"Advertisers follow eyeballs, so it could be successful. Ultimately margins are under pressure as classifieds migrate online at a lower price. I suspect they will eventually bottom out and online will be big enough to help the total organization grow. Unfortunately that time is likely to be a ways away."