Why or why not use OpenPublish for our newspapers

IMHO it depends by the date a Beta version of OP7 will be available. Alpha is too much "alpha" and unstable. Drupal 7 is out from much time, it would be desiderable a proper version of OP too, while it's still chained with the old D6

-- luciano

To use OpenPublish or not? It depends on
1) your specific requirements and if OpenPublish will fulfil these
2) when you plan to deploy the new CMS. The longer you can wait, the great the features and stability of OpenPublish Drupal 7 will be, but again you have to be sure that the features delivered suit you, as in 1)
3) if you need to migrate content from your existing system into Drupal. There are some migration tools out there (e.g. Drupal modules to automate migration from from community board software phpBB, others CMSs like wordpress, joomla) but you may need some custom bespoke tools you write yourself.

Think about your requirements first, rather than find a solution like OpenPublish before this (horse before cart, tail wagging dog analogies) It is conceivable that other Drupal-based distributions, cherry picked solutions chosen by yourself that are available right now could suit your needs.

Consider the following contributed modules available now that can provide functionality to suit newspapers. These following modules can be used with the standard Drupal 7 distribution, they are contributed modules because they don't come with the standard core Drupal 7 by default because they are suited to certain applications like publishing and may not used by everyone who uses Drupal 7. That is the beauty of Drupal, this is the standard approach, i.e.: Your solution = Drupal 7 core (the standard Drupal 7 download) + application specific add-on modules. These add-on modules are nonetheless very well supported, highly acclaimed and actively developed:

For newspaper layout and styling:
- Panels (Powerful insitu, web based layout system, without bypassing Drupal and having to edit the raw theme code )
- Panels Everywhere (extends Panels providing even more layout capability)
- Omega Theme (highly flexible and free base theme)
- Sweaver (edit CSS (layout, font, styling, decoration) insitu i.e. within drupal admin (not back door editing theme code via (S)FTP etc.)
- @Font Your Face (for web fonts) / Font Management

For news paper features and Highlights:
- Rotating Banner (simple image based carousel with hyperlinks, with user definable transitions, included with Drupal Gardens sites for example)
- Views Slideshow (for rotating, carousel, big banners which can use any of your content, via Views)

For easy, stable multiple batch image uploading:
- Media (excellent module. For quick get going, out-of-the box ready (to save you configuring) create a free Drupal Gardens site and export the code (it's Drupal 7-based))

For visitor stats:
- Google Analytics Drupal module

Key Built-in modules that come with Drupal 7:
- Views (display content in a number of different ways, e.g. articles as teasers on front page, most read, most commented, photo galleries as thumbnails (I can advise on this if needed, from my own experiences) etc. etc.)

All of these are available now. My view is that it would make sense for them to be included in OpenPublish Drupal 7 in the future, as they provide relevant publisher functionality, unless of course OpenPublish can do something better if not re-inventing the wheel.