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A long time ago someone said to me: "When the parent becomes threatened by the child, the stage is set for a Greek tragedy."

If reports are to be believed, that's playing out right now in San Diego, where Karin Winner, the editor of the decaying and decrepit Union-Tribune, has engineered the exit of Chris Jennewein and Ron James, two of the best online guys in the newspaper business. Not the first time this has happened. And sadly, probably not the last.

The newspaper's audience in-market penetration has sagged to 54%, while the website has added 17.2%, according to the latest ABC data. In addition, the website has built a separate national audience/revenue proposition (out-of-market usage is not measured by ABC) based on inbound tourism. So the response is for the newsroom to seize control and oust the growth guys. Dumb.

Jay Rosen points to a thought-provoking speech in which Clay Shirky likens American television to a gin bender that unfortunately has lasted half a century.

All those hours wasted on mind-numbing trash. How many hours? He calculates "two hundred billion hours, in the U.S. alone, every year," and projects that's enough to create the equivalent of 2,000 Wikipedia projects, assuming Wikipedia encapsulates "100 million hours of human thought."

I certainly agree about the waste of human potential represented by the time we devote to television, which I also think is a major factor in corroding the social fabric of America by keeping us from talking to each other.

I wish I could be so optimistic about our liberation and our future, but my straight-A girls have fallen under the spell of "America's Next Top Model," which my cable system seems intent on running nonstop until either Armageddon or we run out of electricity, whichever comes first.

(I defend my BSG addiction on the grounds that it's artistic commentary on current events and human nature.)

Now that Vin Crosbie's year of teaching at Syracuse is drawing to a close, he's talking about what he found in about a quarter of the faculty:

"They're obstructionists because they either deny things are changing (for example, one still thinks the Internet is a fad that will disappear) or they've grown too comfortable teaching the same curricula year after year for 20 or more years. They are tenured and so can't be fired, and the doctrine of academic freedom allows them to teach whatever they see fit."

I always thought the point of academic freedom had to do with research and ultimately the growth of human knowledge, not simply to teach whatever the hell you want.

So I looked it up in Wikipedia to see the current consensus definition from people with a surplus of time on their hands. Interestingly, the article is flagged that it "may not represent a worldwide view of the subject," but it does use these words:

"Academic Freedom is the belief that the freedom of inquiry by students and faculty members is essential to the mission of the academy. ... Academic tenure protects academic freedom by ensuring that teachers can be fired only for causes such as gross professional incompetence or behavior that evokes condemnation from the academic community itself."

So: Are academic luddites practicing academic freedom? I don't mean to be unkind, but are they perhaps merely professionally incompetent?

An academic position isn't a place to go hide from the storm. It's a great place to be a storm-chaser. It's sad to hear of people who've passed up that opportunity in favor of retiring on the job.

Back in the early 1800s a young French writer wrote some observations on the character of American society that I think have something to tell us about how journalists and newspapers should use the Internet.

The writer was Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville, and he wrote Democracy in America, a remarkably clear and astute commentary on the nature of American society.

Consider the era. Most of Europe was ruled by coalitions consisting of aristocratic families, monarchs, and the Roman Catholic church. The French revolution had ended disastrously, as most revolutions do. The unfolding apparent success of the American experiment was no mere curiosity.

De Tocqueville was looking for lessons, and he sought them by using the tools of the reporter. He traveled, he visited, and he interviewed hundreds of Americans.

Occasionally a newspaper journalist will write something arrogant and stupid about the blogosphere today. Such writers should read de Tocqueville carefully. His frank account of the failings of the press, and his carefully hedged defense of freedom of expression, might help one or two newspaper columnists understand that bloggers ultimately are part of the fraternity and not the enemy.

But the parts that I find most compelling have to do with the process of association.

De Tocqueville found the United States to be populated by joiners -- people who spontaneously associated in various types of clubs and groups, formal and informal, as their first response to any sort of challenge.

"If a stoppage occurs in a thoroughfare and the circulation of vehicles is hindered," he wrote, "the neighbors immediately form themselves into a deliberative body; and this extemporaneous assembly gives rise to an executive power which remedies the inconvenience before anybody has thought of recurring to a pre-existing authority superior to that of the persons immediately concerned."

In other words, when faced with a problem, Americans get together in groups and solve it. But it's not just about problem-solving; it's about everything.

In his second volume: "Americans of all ages, all conditions, and all dispositions constantly form associations. They have not only commercial and manufacturing companies, in which all take part, but associations of a thousand other kinds, religious, moral, serious, futile, general or restricted, enormous or diminutive. The Americans make associations to give entertainments, to found seminaries, to build inns, to construct churches, to diffuse books, to send missionaries to the antipodes; in this manner they found hospitals, prisons, and schools. If it is proposed to inculcate some truth or to foster some feeling by the encouragement of a great example, they form a society. Wherever at the head of some new undertaking you see the government in France, or a man of rank in England, in the United States you will be sure to find an association."

The reason I find all of this interesting and germane to the question of how journalists should use the Internet is simple: I think the ultimate product of journalism is a political product.

By informing, we empower individuals to take an active and participatory role in defining our collective future. Our real product is not the newspaper or the website or the corporate profit margin, but rather a democratic society that works.

If that is our actual goal, how should we use the Internet?

Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam cites de Tocqueville and the American practice of forming associations in Bowling Alone, his landmark book on "the collapse and revival of the American community."

Putnam documents a decline in our tendency to form and join associations, and correlates that with a number of depressing statistics including the decline of interest in, and readership of, newspapers. Journalism is part of community, drawing from and contributing to the process.

Democracy works when people have a strong enough web of trust that they are able to work together, and when people have faith that their own actions can make a difference.

Both our trust and our faith are endangered by an array of powerful forces as diverse as entertainment television, the automobile, and the cynical political consultant who seeks to divide us in order that his clients may conquer. As we withdraw from the process of association and pull back from civic life, we suffer both individual and collective setbacks.

But if we understand that as journalists we are participants in this process, and not mere observers (or victims), we may find clues that lead us to an answer to my question.

Print journalists tend to look at the Internet as a publishing platform, a distribution channel that they should adopt only on the principle that "readers" should be able to get "news" in any form they might prefer.

But that misses the salient characteristic of the Internet. It is a network in which all nodes are created equal, and endowed by their creators with with the potential to contribute and participate as well as consume.

This democratizes and transforms journalism from an institution belonging to persons of rank ("professionals") to one that is open to all, and that is disruptive. But it also creates opportunity if we recognize that our goal should be an informed and engaged democratic society that works.

By convening, by leading and facilitating conversational processes, we can feed and reinvigorate the American habit of association that de Tocqueville saw in the 1830s. We can help rebuild the "social capital" that Putnam describes as declining.

But to do this, we have to not only rethink our jobs and recognize the constructive role we play in community. We also must confront some fears. These include fear of technology, fear of our own inadequate skill sets, fear of opinion, and ultimately fear of the "people formerly known as the audience."

And we need to understand the big value of small talk.

There are many ways to fail when convening community, whether online or off.

The abandoned garden represents one kind of failure. A newspaper launches a forum or adds commenting capabilities to its website with no statement of principle, no aspirations other than adding some cheap pageviews, no leadership, no management, and often no rules. The result is chaos and damage.

But the opposite also is possible. Diving into the deep end of the social capital pool also can lead to failure. An empty forum and a failed "citizen journalism" project are as forlorn as an empty restaurant.

To succeed we need, as de Tocqueville described, both the "enormous" and the "diminutive."

Human beings naturally exchange meaningless pleasantries about the weather before engaging in serious conversation. When we seek to build community online, we have to recognize that the small interactions are how we establish the social norms and the trust relationships that can open the door to productive and serious conversation.

The Saguaro Seminar prescribes "150 things you can do to build social capital." Some of them are very small actions. I particularly like "ask neighbors for help and reciprocate." Borrow a shovel, then return it. You've done something very small that can transform a relationship.

Now apply that to the Internet. And heed de Tocqueville's words:

"In democratic countries the science of association is the mother of science; the progress of all the rest depends upon the progress it has made. ... If men are to remain civilized or to become so, the art of associating together must grow and improve in the same ratio in which the equality of conditions is increased."

Via Martin Stabe, who should be in your RSS reader: Bridgestone (aren't they a tire and rubber company?) has somehow given birth to an unholy abomination that combines many of the shortcomings of a broadsheet printed newspaper with the shortcomings of electronic technology. It's a "full-size" e-paper. Ewwww!

There's just no way to think about the future and get it right. The other night we were all watching "Back to the Future, Part 2" for about the 900th time. I got a chuckle out of the "Surf Vietnam" poster on a wall in 2015 Hill Valley. In the 1980s, when the film was made, the idea of tourism in Vietnam was about as futuristic as flying cars and hoverboards. Somehow I doubt that we'll have flying cars or hoverboards in the next seven years. But Vietnam tourism? Of course. Why not?

Since I got back from my recent trip to Asia I've been armchair-traveling, thinking about how I want to visit Cambodia and Vietnam next time I have a legitimate reason to be in the area (i.e., somebody pays my airfare). Once again Mindy McAdams is ahead of me. She's heading to Vietnam, Cambodia and (of course) Malaysia, and blogging about it.

There is still much grinding poverty in that region, and plenty of casual violation of human rights to criticize, if you want to sit at home and cast stones.

But there's also hope, growth, and a recognition that education and technology are the way to the future.

Cambodia even lets you order your visa electronically and pay the fee with a credit card. In the Open Source spirit, they're asking for volunteers to translate their website into more languages (they already have 25) and they have an official e-visa blog. Angkor Wat has become an international tourist destination.

Just a few years ago, who would have predicted that?

Back in 1994 when I was recruiting a design director for Star Tribune Online, I got a blizzard of applications from artgeeks from as far away as Australia arguing that if I really believed in the new virtual interactive universe I'd hire them and let them work from home.

Well, I didn't believe that much. When I eventually hired Jamie Hutt from the Halifax Daily News, I forced him to confront the hell that is the U.S. immigration system, haul his family halfway across Canada and south to Minnesota, and set down new roots in Minneapolis, where he continues to crank out great designs today.

In 1994 it seemed obvious that we were far from prepared to have a fully virtual organization.

But 14 years later? We've made some progress. Twitter, Skype, Pownce, Facebook, Ning ... these tools all collapse space. This morning I know that Naka Nathaniel took the buyout from the NYT and that Kevin Anderson in the UK just installed Hardy Heron and that Matthew Buckland is "sniffing paint" in South Africa. And that Ernesto Burden is attending a NewspaperNext workshop while Ken Riddick is not going to be freezing in Minnesota any more.

But despite all this electronic connectivity, when it comes to getting high-quality work done quickly, face to face still wins.

I just stepped out of a darkened meeting room. Half a dozen coders are gathered in a sitebuilding sprint, working on a big Drupal project for one of Morris' non-newspaper businesses.

These guys ordinarily work in cubicles on one of two floors in the Wachovia building in Augusta. It's not as if they're ordinarily separated by six or eight time zones, like the code sprinters who gather at your typical Drupalcon. And it's not as if they're actually talking -- in fact, when I walked in they all had headphones or earbuds.

Yet that proximity that makes for casual, high-bandwidth, intense exchanges seems to really make a difference when it's time to roll.

That and a large continuous supply of drinks and munchables.