Where will we get our news in 20 years?

I'm not a writer for a newspaper (though I occasionally write an op-ed). That being said, I am constantly amazed at how slow many industries have been to adapt their businesses to the internet. I recently saw this collective expert blog post on the NYTimes about the future of newspapers. What was truly astonishing was that some really smart people could have such obviously bad ideas. There were also some great ideas, but it's amazing to see how hard it is for us to change the way we think about things...

Joel Kramer - chief executive and editor of MinnPost.com
I do think there is a strategy that might keep a high-quality regional newspaper modestly profitable in the future: Rely much more on revenue from readers. Publish a newspaper worth $2 a day, the price of a cup of coffee, and $5 on Sunday. Raise the quality. Make it more in-depth, more analytical, to complement the immediacy of your free Web site, and do not make that deeper, more insightful coverage available for free on the web. Perhaps make the printed product a tailored mix of sections that appeal to different readers: For $2, you get to pick, say, four sections out of six.

Seriously? Here's another one...

Steven Brill - founder, The American Lawyer magazine, Court TV and Brill’s Content. Chief executive of Clear-Verified Identity Pass, the fast pass for airport security, and teaches journalism seminars at Yale College and Yale Law School.
So papers have to find a way back to being paid. I think in many ways the prospects may be brighter for papers like the Seattle P.I. or the Star Tribune to charge online, because they don’t have as many content competitors for the good local reporting they do. Local newspapers are the best brands, and people will pay a small amount online to get information — whether it be a zoning board meeting or a Little League game — that they can’t get anywhere else.

Truthfully, there were some really smart comments that reflect some pretty innovative ideas about what news will actually become, so don't disregard the post after reading this. I was just blown away by these two individuals lack of understanding of the internet.

Then I saw this blog post about how some reporters now operate in the internet age. It's really interesting and I strongly recommend it as a read. Notice how the reporter mentioned looks at the diverse spaces that people on the internet congregate as an opportunity to grow his audience, not a liability.

I guess what this all means to me is that it very much reflects the way entrepreneurs see the world in general. Entrepreneurs look around and see opportunities: opportunities to innovate and create something new. They are not afraid of risk (that's where I jump ship) and they have an intuitive sense for what people want. If you look at the different articles and perspectives, it becomes clear who are the entrepreneurs and who are the people about to get creatively destroyed by the evolution of the newspaper industry.