Don't forget the other major advantage that cable offered, James: quality. Does anybody else remember the days of adjusting TV antennas the entire duration of a show and still getting a result that was barely watchable?

I have a lot of channels that come in over my cable with significantly less quality than I'd prefer. Yet every single one of them is still preferable to the over-the-air reception we used to get in the stone age days before my dad finally caved and got cable.

Your variety point is a good one, and you're right that there's no real online equivalent at the moment. There's also no real equivalent to the quality difference - especially since it wasn't a quality of content difference but merely a quality of distribution difference. On the internet, distribution quality is pretty much good enough across the board.

That said, there are a number of people out there who are making a fair amount of money at this blogging game. I will presume to say you're one of them, James, and so am I. So, one can understand why traditional media outlets would consider that a possibility for their own survival. THere's obviously money out there to be made, and they think they can do it better.

What they are not considering, is that the newer media types are doing the job that much better, in terms of content, which is why they're doing well in the dinosaurs are not.

The dinosaurs, for their part, are still stuck in the mold of the medium being a problem, rather than the message. The fact is, until such time as they learn that's not the cause of their problems, they're going to continue to sink in whatever medium they may decide to attempt.

Taking a step further, there are a number of people out there who are in fact making money at it because they're doing it better than the dinosaurs, but who are not making nearly enough money to support a dinosaur type operation. On that basis the dinosaurs have two strikes against them. The first one being because the issue is not the medium but the message, and even if they did it right as many bloggers are, they're not going to make enough money to save themselves, anyway.

The real problem that newspapers felt is that over the period of the last thirty years so many have been acquired in leveraged buyouts and the resultant company saddled with the debt. That was fine during the days of easy credit but it's not great now.

There's space for real print newspapers reporting real news gathered by real newspaper men and women. There isn't any space for nationwide newspaper chains that pay six and seven figure salaries to publishers and star columnists.

There's also no space for daily journals of opinion. If you want that on more than a weekly or monthly basis you can read blogs for free.