It’s such a tired story that I’ve basically stopped writing about it.  Another set of buyouts at a major newspaper, which will be followed by mandatory pink slipping to get the staff down to a level that’s sustainable…for now.

Let’s forget about the status quo, as the situation for newspapers is still in transition.  Rather, let’s look forward.

• What is a sustainable staffing model/cost structure for you if you needed to subsist on online revenue alone?
• Partnerships – what kind of new media partnerships could help expand that online revenue?  (Hint: if your proposed partner is another newspaper, you’re going to fail.)
• In fact, what is your plan, if any, for online revenue growth?

Okay, as consumers here are some questions for us:

• Where will you be going to get credible news if your local newspaper, or even newspapers/news media in general aren’t there?
• Where will quality journalism come from if it’s not from the news media?  Can we really expect quality from a journalist who must blog on the side while working a “real” job?
• What would happen to you if the revenue model for your industry was stood on it’s ear.

We continually here that “content wants to be free.”  The problem is that quality content generation, i.e. journalism, comes at a price.  Hence we need to  consider where the cost burden for quality journalism should be carried.