Realistically, how do you rate the odds of most poorly run newspaper companies when it comes to pulling off such a maneuver? At a moment when most newspaper chains are struggling to comprehend where they are now that they’ve lost most of their market value.

What you prescribe is correct, but your first point whistles past an enormous graveyard: HOW do you convince top management to understand the issues? Because you simply can’t act with any hope of success until that happens, and top management believes this kind of thinking is just hippie-talk.

The revolutionary thought? Why bother? Why not go outside these companies and start from scratch? Traditional media had an opportunity to extend its brand successfully into new media forms, but our industry botched that move several years ago (because profits weren’t high enough and the culture of the Web annoyed and offended us).

The good news is, once these old companies lose their grip on local markets, there will be more meaningful opportunity to find the capital needed to challenge for shares of that market. I think we’ll see historic and significant capital formation around new media startups during the coming recession.

I find Ms. Gahan’s comment in your post interesting. She suggests journalists move away from what we typically think of as working a beat, and instead rely on users to generate at least some of that content while the journalists then provide analysis and context. Seems to me that’s what bloggers do right now, with varying degrees of success and earning differing amounts of scorn from journalists — they take content created by journalists or others and then provide context, amplify points, analyze, etc.

Ms. Gahan proposes flipping that on its head to a certain extent, which definitely flies in the face of the way most news operations work, and would probably incite all three of your gorillas.

Looking forward to continuing this discussion.

- Amy Gahran

Re: No. 3. “Dedicate experimental resources to using native XML digital assets …” Traditional media companies may not (probably do not) have adequate resources with the necessary skill sets, so we cannot underestimate the learning curve here.

And @neomaxcom makes a good point at WeMediaCommunity.org in response to this. He’s right, we are “too quick to discount as worthless those citizen contributions that don’t fit the notion of journalism.” We can be quite snobbish and must let go of being central figures if we are to successfully grow online communities.

We also cannot just label it a “democratic space” and allow everything in the name of free speech. There must be a clear mission, moderation and tools for the community to successfully maintain and protect itself.