I suspect we’ll see the revival of the local newspaper. I’ve got a cousin who runs one that has a circulation of 10,000. I thought they’d were stuck in time but now I see they were visionaries.

As an author I can tell you what you already know. Just by looking at the numerous remakes that have been done in the past five years alone is an indication that people are becoming less and less involved with original thinking.

You raise a very good point that newspapers web sites aren’t doing very much in terms of innovation. There is so much data flowing through these portals and they need to leverage it. Whether that’s using social networking utilities, video comments, or flash content (widgets), we all need to innovate.

Keep pushing for innovation, you’re doing your part.

With management so seeped in newsprint for the last 20, 25 or 30 years, can you be surprised at the outcome?

I’ve heard a resurgence in the “print is 80% or our revenue” meme that many use to justify a more conservative approach to the web, but I suspect that before the days of consumer refrigeration the same logic was used by those that harvested ice for a living (http://blog-o-blog.com/22/11/2008/treading-water/).