Community papers have been feeling the effects of print journalism’s secular decline for years. Now the shrinkage is rising to the top of the befuddled industry.

Yesterday, Gannett, the publisher of USA Today, announced the paper will transmogrify by increasing collaboration between the news and business departments in an attempt to make the paper more attractive to marketers. In other words, the separation between Church and State (the business side of the newsroom from the editorial side) will cease to exist.

Gone are section editors that oversaw the various parts of the paper. Gone are 130 jobs, a 9 percent reduction in the workforce of the second-largest paper in the U.S. by circulation. Instead, USA Today plans to shift its focus from its print product to developing a “multi-media [sic] company” focusing on online and mobile distribution (you can see the full internal memo on the Gannett Blog, which is run by Jim Hopkins, a former USA Today reporter and editor).

At this point, it is readily apparent that news organizations will need an online presence to survive in the future. Journalism, though, is by definition a search for truth and accuracy that is free of bias and outside influences, like business and finance, that would cloud its mission to report the facts in an accurate fashion.

Yes, USA Today’s average daily circulation in the six months through March declined 14 percent to 1.8 million, compared with an drop of 8.7 percent for the industry as a whole, according to Audit Bureau of Circulations data. And yes, ad revenue declined 29 percent in 2009 and by 11 percent in the first quarter. At a publicly-traded company like Gannett, declines such as these are unacceptable to shareholders (the shares have dropped 16 percent this year). The company clearly needs to go in a different direction—the numbers tell that truth—but betraying one of the central commandments of journalism in an attempt to do so is enough to send a shiver down any idealistic spine.

USA Today has been a pioneer since it debuted its content-light and color-heavy pages back in 1982. Whether the “busintorial” model becomes the new industry standard remains to be seen.