I see the real opportunity for the newspapers as something like Kyle stated. Take the time to go in depth on important issues and stories and release these articles in a bi-weekly or monthly print journal format. Leverage the name recognition with an online presence that focuses on real time news and events.

As long as the papers keep trying to print current news, they will fail. “Tomorrow’s headline” doesn’t have the same meaning anymore. Now, “tomorrow’s headline” was just yesterday’s news.

Of course the smart ass in me just wants to say the newspapers can’t go away, what else will people line their bird cages with?

Click to play this video.

If they “got the Internet” thing – how would you have them make money?

News will always survive, just how you receive it will change.

The current business model is broken. We don’t make money from subscriptions, we make money from selling the number of subscribers we have to advertisers whom in return buy advertising which pays for the paper. This is the same business model online as with many other sites. More page views, streams, etc, the more advertisers you can get.

Papers have to keep it local (unless you are NY Times, LA Times, USA Today, etc). But not only keep it local, they need to adapt and be able to adapt quickly. Something we have failed at time and time again.

Think about it, the paper has been your way of getting news for 75+ years. It’s a really old business model run by people that don’t want to break that mold, they believe in it.

To me the only way to start change is do away with old thinking and this is something most newspapers have not been able to do yet. They need younger, fresher more forward thinking minds; not employees doing this for 30+ years and now being forced to go online, that is sub-par at best.

Sorry I could rant for days, it just kills me that people do have ideas and they are killed before they see the light of day.

Adaptation is key and until we can do this we will fail and continue to fail.

I don’t believe there is anything that can save the newspapers as they are today. However, they can evolve by supplying consumers what they can’t readily get from the web.

What is that you ask? It’s good, local, neighborhood news.

We still want to know about our neighborhoods so we may see the loss of large mainstream news, but we will see smaller local rags move to the forefront…if only for a brief second. Till someone comes along and changes the paradigm on our local news.

Long story short, the best way to save the newspapers isn’t to save them, but to re-evaluate their consumer base and evolve into something that provides them with what they want.

Other than that, though, they’re going to have to start to understand this whole “internet” thing and start using it to its full potential.

Yeah they need to make newspapers technical and send stories to my email or something that I check daily…otherwise…I’ll never read it.