W. S. Bourne founded The Observer, the world’s oldest Sunday newspaper, in 1791 in the belief that owning a publication would “obtain him a rapid fortune”. Sadly, as other Observer owners have found, profits did not quite materialise. Three years after its creation, heavily indebted, Bourne tried to sell his title to the Government. Fortunately, ministers resisted the temptation to nationalise that part of the press and, instead, the hundred years that followed brought a series of standalone Sunday newspaper launches. The News of the World, The People and The Sunday Times are some of the survivors.

Yet, brands aside, with today’s technology it is worth asking whether you would start from here. After all, at first glance, having a separate team to cover only one day a week, on which there is little news to report – sport excepted – seems rather curious. Instead, today’s pressure is working out how much news to release online, in real time.

Given that digital is the most promising source of growth for newspapers today, on this thinking Sunday newspapers have to work harder to justify the amount of resources they consume. That seems to have been the brutal calculus at Telegraph Media Group, which this week forced out Patience Wheatcroft, Editor of The Sunday Telegraph, in a dispute over how much time and energy Sunday writers would have to devote to the net.

There are, of course, plenty of noble and familiar defences of the Sunday formula, although all of them apply equally to Saturdays, too. Readers expect – and, in these immediacy-obsessed times, deserve – a more considered product that can bring exclusives ranging from David Beckham’s love life to a leak of Cabinet documents, as well as the property, car and review sections that become readable when the whole afternoon is at hand. Consider for a moment The Economist (admittedly, it comes out earlier in the week than on Sunday, but the comparison is valid). The weekly does not pretend to have a dynamic web strategy – no online video here – but the printed publication is feeling that its influence is collapsing as a result.

However, it is hard to justify how Sunday newspapers can justify complete independence. After all, The New York Times, for all its vast number of pages on a Sunday, does not operate as a separate newspaper. It is perfectly possible for Sunday writers to produce commentary online during the week, while holding exclusives for the weekend. In truth, it is probably only history that gives Sunday titles their degree of independence – that and the fact that working seven days a week is no fun for anybody.

There are commercial arguments that appear to justify the standalone Sunday. After all, Sunday vies with Saturday to be the bestselling day of the week. Internet readership tumbles on Saturday (it can easily be half the weekday audience on Times Online, and Sunday, while better, is still below the weekday average). Consider a random day for telegraph.co.uk: on Sunday, July 8, there were 315,291 unique visitors to the website; on the Monday the figure was 608,208, and the figure never dropped below half a million on the weekdays that followed. On Fridays the Daily Mail passed a million in July; on Saturdays and Sundays, visitors numbered fewer than 400,000.

Yet you do not have to dig deep beneath the surface to see how complex the situation is. Unfortunately, newspapers are businesses, not football clubs (although Mr Abramovich’s approach to investment would be welcomed). Many publishers find that it is hard work to generate a profit on some newspapers, and breaking even somewhere is usually necessary for long-term survival.

It is the profitability of a Sunday title that will largely determine how far it gets integrated into the rest of the operation. And on the day of rest, profits vary significantly. As in all media markets, disproportionate rewards go to market leaders. If The Observer generates a relatively modest £2 million, it is hardly surprising that greater integration with the Guardian Unlimited website is in the air. The Sunday Times, though, which can generate knocking on for £80 million in a good year, is rather more able to justify autonomy, although it, too, has seen some of its money-spinners – such as the high-volume job advertising in the Appointments section – go online and elsewhere.

In truth, there is little point being nostalgic. There is plenty of life in ink on dead trees, and newspaper profits, where they exist, ought to be preserved. The only way to do that, of course, is to keep readers. But, particularly as Sundays live a more marginal existence, it makes more sense for new investment to chase growth online. History is not enough to justify the status quo. Part-integration is probably inevitable.

The Sun, which is published by News International, the company that owns The Times, is experimenting with selling copies through about 100 distributors in the streets of London. It is a marketing exercise, really – the redtop is being sold at a discounted 20p – and so not viable commercially in the long haul. If a distributor is costing £10 an hour, wages and other costs lumped in, you would have to sell 50 Suns (nearly one a minute) just to afford the distributor. But perhaps a few thousand Suns have been sold each day, suggesting there is a demand if you can reach readers.

The decline in newsagents (thanks, Tesco) and the collapse in home delivery, particularly in London, do make it harder for people get hold of newspapers. That, in turn, may be a factor in the relentless sales decline. Rethinking distribution could help. It should be easier to get all newspapers in coffee shops, creating, say, a one-stop shop for all morning survival needs.

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