From a James Lileks. column that provided inspiration when writing draft 1.0 of the PegNews business plan:

Blogs haven’t toppled old media. The foundations of Old Media were rotten already. The new media came along at the right time. Put it this way: you’ve see films of old buildings detonated by precision demolitionists. First you see the puffs of smoke – then the building just hangs there for a second, even though every column that held it up has been severed. We’ve been living in that second for years, waiting for the next frame. Well, here it is. Roll tape. Down she goes. And when the dust settles we will be right back where we were 100 years ago, with dozens of fiercely competitive media outlets throwing elbows to earn your pennies...

... And so the Internet had it for lunch, because the Internet does not have to schedule 17 meetings to develop a strategy for impactfully maximizing brand leverage in emerging markets; the Internet does not have to worry about how a decision will affect one’s management trajectory; the Internet smells blood and leaps, and that has turned the game around, for better or worse. So we’re back to where we were in 1904 – except that the guys on the corner shouting WUXTRY, WUXTRY aren’t grimy urchins selling the paper – they’re the people who wrote the damn thing, too.

I repeat my earlier obvious advice to middle-market newspapers: go local.

Netscape and Ning founder Marc Andreessen today starts the "New York Times Deathwatch". In noting the expertise of their board vis-a-vis the disruptive Interwebs, he says:

So, if you want to issue bonds to pay for FCC-approved snack cake manufacturing in a submarine on display at a national park by a sundress-wearing cigarette-puffing Levitra-popping Judy Miller, you're pretty much set.

From newly-discovered "Rogue Columnist" Jon Talton:

The newspaper was always a tricky balance, where advertising paid for an independent news operation. The best newspapers carried it off. But news alone could never “pay for itself.” It would be have been difficult for any mature industry to face the sea changes that swamped newspapers. But a more decentralized, competitive industry might have found its way. Imagine if one company would have turned a “dying” PM newspaper into an online newspaper? It would have been very lean, but a wonderful competitive weapon. Imagine if another would have bought Yahoo in its infancy and both fed off its innovation and used it as a news and advertising platform?

Read Steve Yelvington's whole post on why Microsoft is like The Newspaper Industry and how it needs a self-administered shot of Yahoo's DNA.