Newspaper managing editors who gathered in Detroit for a mid-October convention had plenty of horror stories to swap about the retailing recession, the advertising drought and the downward spiral in once-fat profits.

They also endured a bit of shock therapy, in the form of a session looking at similarities between the Motor City's beleaguered auto industry and their own.

"It's thought-provoking to hear a guy from Chrysler say, 'Here's how we screwed up,' " said Jerome M. Ceppos, managing editor of the San Jose Mercury News. "It makes one wonder, 'What might I be doing wrong?' "

It's not as though we'll all soon be reading newspapers made in Japan.

But with America's newspapers spending their fourth straight holiday season mired in the worst economic slump that anyone in the business can recall, many publishers and editors are asking themselves profound questions.

The most jittery wonder whether newspapers might be making the same sorts of blunders that sent the U.S. auto industry skidding a decade ago: failure to adjust to consumers' changing habits, arrogance about pricing and slowness in responding to competition.

And all are pondering whether the economic troubles that have battered ad linage and operating margins will prove to be temporary byproducts of a recession or more fundamental, long-lasting changes.

The sudden folding of the Dallas Times Herald last Monday and the decision a few days earlier by the New York Daily News to seek protection from creditors under Chapter 11 of the federal Bankruptcy Code have lent a dramatic urgency to the questions.

As the downturn drags on, a consensus seems to be building that this "white-collar" recession could forever change the newspaper business, much as the auto industry was altered by oil shocks and Japanese imports in the 1970s and '80s. Many executives are bracing themselves for the possibility that the coming decade will be a time of immense challenges.

"I'm not sure I view this as a recession anymore," said Maxwell E. P. King, editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer. "I see it as a change both in my industry and in the way the country's economy works."

At the very least, the recession has imposed some harsh new realities on newspaper companies.

With profits and advertising revenue tumbling, papers from Sacramento to Hackensack have been making painful adjustments--closing bureaus, reducing news space, slashing travel budgets and downsizing payrolls through layoffs, attrition and early retirements.