Frank Daniels, the acid-tongued former N&O publisher, greeted a Raleigh reporter recently thusly: “Still got a job?”

It’s a question of lot of newspaper employees are asking these days.

Two big trees fell last week: Paul O’Connor with the Winston-Salem Journal and Chuck Riesz with the Wilmington Star took buyouts. Word is that more axes will fall in newsrooms across the state.

It’s not just here. The St. Petersburg, Fla., Times announced big layoffs last week.

The journalists don’t understand it. As the target of Daniels’ question mused: “I don’t understand why nobody at the newspapers can figure out how to make money on the web.”

Here’s the dilemma. The papers’ content is available free on their websites. So why buy a paper when you can get it free? So advertisers ask: Why buy a print ad when the readers are on the website?

Here’s the problem for us readers: When the papers lose money, they dump people. This means a poorer quality news product.

And here’s my bet: Somebody will solve this problem and make a bunch of money delivering news on the web.

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