1. Link journalism – it might work if newspapers everywhere could consider it part of their basic ethics to link to the original and most local source of a small-town story that makes it big. For other types of stories, I just see either a mess of stories from small-town papers that may or may not be very well done … or just an impossibly cumbersome task to link to a broad number of stories from all over the place. You must be referring to using some easy to use linking system that isn’t quite clear … and that doesn’t involve scanning the Web for related content and manually linking to all of the newspaper sites you can find with related content. That’s not going to happen …

2. A side comment: “The current model is failing because it’s based on a shrinking distribution model.” Well, that’s not the case where I sit … we’re going to be failing because of a shrinking advertising base. Our distribution base is doing pretty well. We’ve got plenty of subscribers. Where are the advertisers lately? Newspapers are way too overpriced for advertisers these days. It’s hitting home NOW. Two years ago was denial. Last year was hope/fear. Today it’s bleak reality. Do you want a smaller paper? Here it comes … And we’re one of the more successful papers …

I finally have visibility for where the newspaper profession is going. I give it five more years for print in many, many places.