I worked for Ford and Chrysler in the late 70′s – early 80′s, and it is quite striking how similar the attitudes of many in journalism are to the attitudes I saw at the Big 3.

The 70′s saw the first big wave of consumer defection from the Big 3 to Japanese imports. At the Big 3, the level of denial of what was happening, and the complete inability to conceive of any way of doing business other than the way they had been, was almost universal. Beyond that, the anger of the managers and employees of the Big 3 at consumers for abandoning them, the sense that they were entitled to the consumers’ patronage, is, in retrospect, quite astonishing.

I see the same sense of entitlement, the same inability to conceive of any other way to do business, in journalism. There are, of course, journalists who understand that things can never be the way they were, but their numbers seem quite few.

It took the Big 3 years to come to grips with the fact that they needed to make fundamental changes to the way they did business. It took many more years to implement those changes, and they are still not done. It is most likely too late for Chrysler, and may be too late for GM as well. In the meantime, tens of thousands of people have lost their jobs.

I wonder how long it will take journalism to figure out that things will never be the same.

I can’t speak to what was discussed in the panel because I wasn’t there. But I have noted, in other discussions, a consistent tendency among defenders of traditional journalism to ignore the factor of time.

Even if print journalism has the edge on quality over online journalism (and I’m no longer convinced it does), it certainly isn’t likely to ten years from now. Even if quality journalism is expensive today, there’s no reason to think better, less expensive means to support journalism won’t arise in coming years (especially when we are already seeing signs of them today).

More to the point: there is no need to insist that ‘quality journalism’ be defined by the standards of the past. As new technology affords new possibilities, our definitions can and will change to acknowledge and embrace them.

And yet the editors and business leaders at a lot of papers keep trying to fix the problem by figuring out the “new” direction of content. There isn’t a new direction — people still want to read the news, and they want it from a credible source.

It’s more complicated than that. I agree that the old customer base wants the news, as it was. But I don’t read the paper the same way they do; I read a half-thousand RSS feeds, some daily, some weekly, some when I can. They’re created by people and sources I’ve personally vetted, and they in turn send me to other things they feel I ought to see.

And I’m not weird, just early. Weinberger and Shirky are right about people’s needs as much as you are. Just different people.

In the short term—and probably for a long time—somebody could make a modest living selling printed newspapers (with very few ads) to folks who used to subscribe to “real” local newspapers.

In the long term, though, that would be a buggy whip maker’s move. A dozen papers, a hundred news feeds, a thousand or more websites I read in a week. All because there are a hundred splintered, overlapping, specialized and active communities I belong to.

Each has its own resources and needs and demands, and each would pay for something different.

The threat to the big papers’ editorial model comes from people like me, like “kids these days”. We are ourselves something closer to editors than consumers.

No. Can’t be. I demand to differ on this one: Corporations cannot be greedy. They aren’t people—they aren’t even remotely like people—no matter what “rights” they claim, and the mythology we have built up about them.

Managers may well be greedy, though. Owners, landlords, bankers. Long time back, it was even millers. Those can be greedy, but they’re people.

If we’re comfortable with the analogy of big newspaper ≈ big organism, then we have to be careful with motivation, is all I’m saying. A big organism may not be “greedy”, but it has controlling interests that want. Drives towards food, territory, sex. Parts of it are “greedy”, sometimes.

That gets stuff done.

Yes, greed may be the motivation of the owners, the consolidators. Nobody ever accused Mister Hearst of altruism, back in the day. But if you look at it, all of it, it only costs so much (as Tony Dearing even said yesterday, in passing) because they feel you need to be that big to make that much money.

Being a big monopoly is a strategy to make money. Maybe (and almost certainly) it’s not rational, but it is reasonable.

Why you need that much money, well, that’s maybe some person’s greed. Or maybe it’s some person’s devotion to the Public Good. Or maybe it’s some person’s quirky sense of artfulness.

This line of your column sums up what I have been thinking: “What I wonder though, is what was never asked yesterday: who will be the first to fire the marketing department and keep the writers and editors?”