On a winter's day in January 2008, the year his newspaper would win six Pulitzer Prizes, Len Downie, the editor of the Washington Post, was asked to take the newspaper's buyout offer in a management shakeup.

The new publisher would be Katharine Weymouth, the niece of board chairman Don Graham and granddaughter of Katharine Graham, the newspaper's legendary publisher during the Watergate era.

Mr. Downie's departure, after 17 years at the helm of the Post, was a watershed for the newspaper, which, beginning in the late 1960s, challenged The New York Times as the nation's greatest news organization.

That night, Don Graham, who had personally selected Mr. Downie to succeed the swashbuckling Ben Bradlee, told him that he was turning over the reins to Ms. Weymouth because she had the ability "to save the paper; she will do things I wouldn't do."

As Dave Kindred recounts the stilted conversation, Mr. Downie knew instinctively what he meant -- merging the Post's website staff, located across the Potomac River in Virginia, with the newspaper staff; even more staff reductions beyond three previous buyouts; and accelerating the Post's pace in embracing the digital revolution in the news business.

The ongoing revolution in how news and information are delivered in the digital era provides the backdrop for Mr. Kindred's highly readable account of the Post's journalistic triumphs and business travails over the past four years.

The author, who was an outstanding sports columnist at the Post, believes major metropolitan newspapers are fighting for their lives, as his full title, "A Great Newspaper Fights for Its Life," tells us.

As readers migrated to the Web and canceled subscriptions to the newspaper, upstart websites, such as Craigslist, began making gigantic inroads in attracting the Post's most profitable advertising. To compound the problem, the national economy plunged into the deepest recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Mr. Kindred narrates his tale through revelatory and entertaining profiles of some of the key reporters, editors and business leaders of the Post.

He also makes it agonizingly clear that beginning in the early 1990s, newsroom leaders such as Bob Kaiser, a former managing editor, began to sound the alarm that the incipient "electronics revolution" could have a profound impact on the viability of the newspaper business.

In 1992, Mr. Kaiser proposed creating an electronic newspaper and putting classified advertising online -- two ideas that with hindsight seem remarkably prescient.

Other profiles communicate Mr. Kindred's passion for great journalism and its best practitioners -- such as Walter Pincus, the Post's venerated national security and intelligence beat reporter, and talented, committed newcomers such as James Hohmann, who at 20 was a Stanford University student.

Reading about what motivates Mr. Pincus and inspires Mr. Hohmann is a poignant and indelible reminder about the importance of the First Amendment.

Newspapers, Mr. Pincus says, "should find a story, tell it, tell it again, tell the truth from the lies, tell it until the powers that be do the right thing."

Says Mr. Hohmann: "Walter makes you want to go into newspapers. I love the public service aspect of it. ... I believe in the line, 'Afflict the comfortable, comfort the afflicted.' "

Together, Mr. Pincus, the idealistic, inspiring curmudgeon, and Mr. Hohmann, the youthful, inspired idealist, represent what the author believes is the best hope and the essential ingredients for excellent journalism in the years ahead.

The ultimate question, which neither Mr. Kindred nor anyone else in the industry has figured out the answer to, is this:

How can the industry find a way to convert the public's seemingly voracious appetite for information online to profits that will provide the funds to pay for in-depth newsgathering?

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