There are caveats aplenty: the LA Times newsroom got to this point because it was cut to a shell of its former self (from 1,200 staff to 660). Online advertising is often sold in packages with print (though if and when print disappears, marketers will have little choice but to shift to digital). And news organisations carry costs besides payroll, such as rent (though some papers are now making their newsrooms virtual).
Still, work with me here: imagine if the Times turned off its presses tomorrow. I've discussed that prospect before, going back to 2005, when Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger acknowledged that his new Berliner presses might be the last this paper would use. But the talk was speculative. Now it could be real: the paperless paper.
I remember the head of another major newspaper company telling me four years ago - with little romantic wistfulness - that if he could abandon print, he would cut $1bn in costs overnight. The problem was that he'd have abandoned about as much ad revenue and would have incurred high shutdown costs.
But at the LA Times, revenue and cost are converging. The paper could avoid some shutdown expenses because its parent, Tribune Company, declared bankruptcy late last year, allowing it to abandon costs and renegotiate contracts. In a conspiratorial frame of mind, one might wonder whether bankruptcy is convenient for the company's head, Sam Zell, a real-estate speculator specialising in depressed properties nicknamed the "Grave Dancer". Bankruptcy could be a convenient cloak for radical change.