newspapers

For more than a decade there's been a deep division in newspaper journalism between the "onliners" and the .. well, let's face it, we all called them Luddites. Dinosaurs. People who just don't get it.

But times change.

All across the country there are efforts to move online publishing responsibility and authority into the core news organization.

It is a move fraught with peril. I've previously warned of the many ways that this can go wrong. But I have become convinced of the following:

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.

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.

B (Baltimore Sun) launched last week and a bunch of new Examiner sites in the process of launching in cities where the Examiner doesn't (yet?) publish in print. They share a webby characteristic that's radically different from the typical newspaper: They link. To the competition. Like crazy.

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.

The other day in an email to a friend I referred to "the economic tsunami that seems headed for the U.S. newspaper industry."

Is that overstated? If you recently lost your job in a newsroom cutback, you probably don't think so.

But when I was traveling last week I saw something that surprised me.

The "Boxing Day tsunami" from the 2004 Great Sumatra-Andaman earthquake was a horrible thing, leading to 300,000 deaths and staggering destruction.