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From Variety comes this report that "the five broadcast nets' average live median age (in other words, not including delayed DVR viewing) was 50 last season." I'd love to know how much of that is due to a shift to Internet browsing, including video of course, and how much of it is a result of the networks driving us away with a barrage of painfully mislabeled "talent" contests mixed with out-of-control commercial clutter.

Either way, it's clear that most of us are taking a more active role in our own video experiences, either selecting when we want to see our preferred entertainment through PVRs, or watching video online. Simon Waldman points out that Youtube is bigger than the entire Internet of 2000 when measured by the amount of traffic it generates. Hulu, a joint venture of NBC Universal and News Corp., seems to be taking off, some networks have videos on their own websites, and of course iTunes is selling videos by the download.

This poses a challenge to those of us who still think of the net as a place driven primarily by the power of words. Clearly I need to get my video camera out of my bag and into my hand.

Yet more evidence of the deepening ownership crisis at American newspapers: the Philadelphia Inquirer's owners are technically in default of their loan terms.

This is one of those things that's likely to be oversimplified, so let's be clear: The Philadelphia Inquirer is not losing money in the simple sense that you and I might think of it. Neither is the Minneapolis-based Star Tribune, another big paper sold to investors by McClatchy after it (foolishly, it seems) stepped in and grabbed the falling Knight-Ridder empire.

These newspapers are clearly declining, but they bring in more than they spend on business operations every month.

The problem isn't whether there's a positive operating margin, but rather the debt-burdened ownership. In addition to operating expenses, they have to pay crushing loan payments.

It's not terribly different from the real estate crisis. In effect, the new owners bought these newspapers by taking out huge mortgages based on assumptions about future income that turned out to be overly optimistic. The operating income is still a positive number, but it's dropping below a level the primary bankers consider healthy.

Unlike your mortgage company (which won't know you're in trouble until you're really in big trouble), the primary bankers are watching these newspapers closely. So they intervened.

This is the downside of the consolidation phase of the newspaper industry. In the last century, giant corporations sucked up the vast majority of American newspapers, and they did it with borrowed money that came from selling stock, selling bonds, and bank loans.

This drove the "market value" of newspapers to staggering heights. When I worked for the Star Tribune and McClatchy bought it for more than a billion dollars, it was a jaw-dropping figure. It was a bit like California real estate, where the median price of a home went from under $100,000 in 1980 to over $450,000 a couple of years ago. In the big picture, it was a bubble.

There's no question in my mind that the old product definition of a "newspaper" is obsolescent, that the future is much more about digital services than print, that the Internet is disconnecting news from advertising messages, and that these forces are dragging down newspaper companies.

But it's the debt load that's the immediate and most bitter problem. Newspapers can make the transitions that face them. But in order to do so, they need to starve the past and feed the future. You can't feed the future if you don't have and can't get capital.

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:

It's not optional. We have to do it. We're coming up on the Picard inflection points. It's not economically feasible to run entirely separate online and print organizations.

They're ready to change. By and large, the "print" people have moved beyond the state of denial that has held them trapped for all these years. That doesn't mean they have the skills. They're a long way from really understanding the Internet. And there are some who pretty far behind the curve. But most want to move ahead.

We have a serious respect problem. Onliners often have an acute sense of being disrespected that can veer into a full-scale inferiority complex. Here's the thing: It works the other way, too. Print folks not only feel overwhelmed and undertrained, they also feel that their existing skills and their core values are not respected by onliners. Constantly hammering that they "just don't get it" makes things worse, not better.

Change hurts. The "five stages of grief" may apply:

1. Denial: "It can't be happening."
2. Anger: "Why me? It's not fair."
3. Bargaining: "Just let me live to see my children graduate."
4. Depression: "I'm so sad, why bother with anything?"
5. Acceptance: "It's going to be OK."

Managers need to be aware and supportive as staff members go through these stages. And it's important to know that the Luddites, the ones who fear change, may not be the ones you expect.

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.

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."

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.

B is the new free youth-targeted daily newspaper. bthesite.com is the website that accompanies it, and it's built entirely around group blogging. They're linking to WBAL, the Baltimore Examiner, the Washington Post, a couple of community organizations, Sports Illustrated and the mothership Baltimore Sun.

Travis Henry, former YourHub editor who jumped ship to the Examiner, sent me a link to the Denver Examiner site. When I looked the lead item was a summary/link directly to the Denver Post. Other headlines link to the Rocky and local TV stations, as well as to Examiner content. National headlines link directly to Fox News and ABC.

How refreshingly nonparanoid! It reminds me of this quote from Peter Gabriel that I stumbled across in a link someone (I forget who) posted to Facebook:

"My friend Brian Eno has been going on for some time about the increasingly important role of the curator over the creator."

What's he talking about? Here's another way of putting it: Context creates value. And another way: Loyalty accrues to the place that helps you find things, not necessarily the place that produces things.

Here's another example of how the Internet has shifted power from institutions, and how that can be a good thing. While the Internet certainly has empowered whispering campaigns and hate bloggers, it also has enabled us to get to the truth behind badly reported news, if we care enough. Today I found the full Jeremiah Wright sermon from Sept. 16, 2001, in which he made the "inflammatory" statement "America's chickens have come home to roost." It turns out he was quoting Edward Peck, former U.S. ambassador to Iraq and deputy director of President Reagan’s terrorism task force. And the focus of the sermon is quite different from what you've heard. Watch it all.