For example, Marc Andreessen, asked a few months ago what he would do if he owned the New York Times, said he’d kill the print edition right off. But in reality, he would figure out that the Sunday paper is still hugely profitable; it’s the rest of the week that’s putting the operation in the red. A web-first weekly will make money, but not nearly as much as the old monopoly print newspapers did.

The basic question you raise is whether newspapers, or news enterprises, in the future can be in the business of selling content (serious journalism), or selling advertising that’s presented along with content. There are still some who hope that consumers will somehow pay for news content, but the general realization is that they won’t, so news organizations need to focus themselves on creating a robust, loyal online community that can be monetized. Huffington Post is doing that. It’s really no different from CNN, which is engaged (mostly) in serious journalism, but makes money because it has captured a valuable audience.

Here’s the big problem: many newspaper publishers have run out of resources to maneuver with—their capitalization is zilch, they can’t borrow money, and they have no cash. So with few exceptions they are just not able to invest in the news business ecosystem of the future. Besides this they have resistant internal cultures that get in the way of transformation. This creates some real opportunities, I think, especially at the local level, for new enterprises launched on the new model.