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With The New York Times leading its business section today with a big story about gloom, doom and the newspaper industry, it seems more pressing than ever to figure out how to make news Web sites more profitable.

The bottom line is clear. The key to improving profits is the ability to charge higher advertising rates which, in the case of Web sites, are linked to the amount of traffic.

This is where it gets murky. Tracking Web traffic seems to me to be a very imperfect science. I don’t pretend to be an expert here so I was happy to find an interview in Editor & Publisher with the head of Nielsen’s online unit that attempts to explain how tracking is done.

The economic turmoil of late created an opportunity to see how some business news sites handled the onslaught of developments. A brief survey found they were all agressively updating, even outlets such as Forbes and BusinessWeek that used to enjoy the luxury of weekly deadlines. No more.

Both sites offered a mix of breaking news stories and analysis for investors. BusinessWeek today posted an interesting story about what financial blogs are reporting while Forbes offered an expert’s view on why a stock market crash may be necessary. Clearly, the editors were seeking to put information out there — and quickly — that would set their sites apart from the competitors.

One observation: Business news sites are relying heavily on video reports — perhaps even more heavily than general news sites. Take for instance Forbes.com which has its own video network with market updates and business stories. The video viewer launches automatically when a reader goes to the homepage.

Thestreet.com has a video network that produces numerous clips every day, and CNBC and Fox Business also have video links directly off their home pages. While the videos may not be all that visually interesting, they must be garnering clicks because they are prevelant on all the business news Web sites.