innovation

I had dinner Friday night with Dean Mills and several other folks from the University of Missouri J-School. Not one word was said about the death of print, the crushing debt loads taken on by big publishing companies, or other depressing topics that tend to dominate journalism conversations (and blogs) these days.

It was an upbeat conversation about exciting possibilities, all hope and energy and yes, optimism. Mizzou has all sorts of fascinating projects in the works.

Since it decided to redirect its efforts toward the Internet, one particular company's "stock price has fallen by half, the portion of its revenue derived online has stagnated at about 5% ... and its online division has been losing money since 2005," observes Howard Weaver.

Sounds like a newspaper company? Actually, it's Microsoft.

Interestingly, both Microsoft and the newspaper industry have benefited, however temporarily, from the rise of the Internet.

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.

If the world unfolded as predicted by Bill Gates, printed newspapers would be dead in the next four years. While he may turn out to have been directionally correct and merely wrong about the timing, it's been interesting to watch the world change around Microsoft and slowly render the software giant impotent at a time when newspapers continue to hang around and even start new print publications.

"If the only tool you have is a hammer," said psychologist Abraham Maslow, "you tend to see every problem as a nail." I thought about that as I examined a couple of recently launched websites: The Industry Standard and NotchUp, both of which bear the "beta" label acknowledging their concepts are only partially baked.

I'll leave it to others to comment on the potential impact on the newspaper industry of the proposed Microsoft-Yahoo takeover.

I'm interested in how Microsoft may be faced with a choice: Change who you are in a very fundamental way, or destroy both Yahoo and yourself in the process.

That is the very choice facing newspapers today, and we might learn something by considering how this takeover might play out.

It should raise some eyebrows that MySQL AB, the Swedish maker of a free database management system, has sold itself to Sun Microsystems at a price that Cnet estimates at (begin Dr. Evil impersonation) one... billion ... dollars. Hopefully it also will open some minds about alternative business models and "low end" innovation.

MySQL's revenue model is best described as "voluntary pay." Anybody can download and use the software at no charge. Businesses are encouraged to sign up for support services, but that's completely optional.