Newspapers have not had it easy in the last 10-15 years. Ever since the dawning of the Age of the Internet, print news media have been in decline. Alan Mutter, a longtime newspaper man himself, predicts that Yahoo! is on the verge of putting some local newspapers out of business and taking over their turf.

Mutter’s prediction is based largely on Yahoo!s recent purchase of Associated Content. If he’s right then Yahoo! could make a move to position itself ahead of Google once again in terms of amount of traffic. And the revenue that it can generate by having print newspapers transition into local ad sales reps, something that newspapers have traditionally done well, can give it added clout and make it more competitive.

Google hasn’t done too well with its newspaper partnership program, but Yahoo! has had that relationship for a few years now.

So here’s the question for you small business owners. Would you advertise with Yahoo! if it published your local news? If that’s where people went to read what was going on in the world, and in your part of the world, instead of their current local newspaper’s website, would you purchase advertising in hopes of getting those eyeballs to your website?