Attorney General Holder says he will consider helping US newspapers

US Attorney General Eric Holder said Wednesday that preserving a healthy newspaper industry was important and that he was open to adjusting antitrust policy if it would help.

"I'd like to think 20, 30, 40 years from now people will still be reading the newspaper," Holder said at a Justice Department press conference.

US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) earlier in the week had urged the Justice Department to give newspapers more leeway to merge or combine operations. Executives at the largest newspaper in Pelosi's district, the San Francisco Chronicle, said the paper was in danger of closing but receive a temporary reprieve when its unions agreed to a wage cut.