The newspaper industry shed nearly 15,000 jobs in 2009, but investors did quite well.

Erica Smith’s Paper Cuts blog, which does the best job in the industry of tracking newspaper job losses, counted 14,845 lost jobs in the newspaper industry during 2009. Keep in mind that her running count includes all jobs, including production and advertising.

On the positive side, stock prices for media companies turned dramatically upward in 2009, reflecting the general trend in the stock market. Rick Edmunds does a nice job of summarizing the results here.