America's Fastest Dying Industries

Another way to avoid disaster? Diversify. In response to decades of declining circulation and shaky print advertising numbers, newspaper publishers are expanding their holdings in non-traditional ways. The two largest, Gannett and Tribune, own a stake Careerbuilder.com, the online job search Web site. In 2005, The New York Times Co. bought About.com, a general information site. Will it work? The jury is out. Worth noting, though--the industry's most successful transition is also its most radical. The Washington Post Co. secured their future by buying Kaplan Learning centers, morphing the company into an "information" firm and leaning on the new entity, rather than their news operations, to drive growth.

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Bowling alleys and arcades have been on a slide for years, but some of the biggest operators believe they have found a recipe for success, in an otherwise struggling industry, by creating broader entertainment complexes. With more appeal to families, and with more revenue from food and beverage services as well, these complexes have thrived while the industry's many small operators have struggled.

IBIS actually identifies these centers as the areas where operators should move to survive.

To be sure, even growing industries aren't likely to be buoyed this year, given the economic slump in the U.S. that's spreading to other parts of the world.

"Against this backdrop, most industries will not perform as well in 2008, with many seeing deteriorating profits amid decelerating revenue growth and high costs," wrote Moody's Economy.com analyst Michael Helmar in a recent industry forecast survey.

But some aren't likely to see growth at all, even when the economy does turn around. Despite federal subsidies for corn ethanol production, the Labor Department says many sectors of the agriculture industry will feel pinched due to rising costs, productivity increases and growing urbanization. Among the hardest hit: tobacco farmers. The government dropped its price supports for tobacco in 2005, exposing a once-protected domestic industry to cheaper foreign competition. Since 2000, tobacco farm revenue dropped by more than 50 percent, according to IBISWorld. It's expected to fall another 17 percent by 2012.