Of course, all this ignores a much bigger issue, which is that we're not nearly talking about an either-or situation here; it would be entirely possible, in fact, for a news company to build an entire umbrella of distribution outlets for their content, to create one uber-ad-rate package for their clients, and still hold onto the kinds of giant audiences newspapers enjoyed at their height. And in fact, a lot of news companies have been trying very hard for the last ten years to do just that, although in typical form almost all of them have failed so far at delivering on their full potential. And this just seems like a fairly easy solution to me, and I don't know why a news company hasn't put the following hybrid plan in place yet - so I'll just detail it here instead and see if you don't agree with me or not.

--Daily red-style paper tabloid, although done in the way I recommend instead of the way they're currently being done. Distributed for free.

--Powerful and simple web portal for national and international news - direct links to appropriate external sites, direct feed URLs, reprints at their site, chance to print articles, save them in my account or email them to others. Direct links as well to all the other daily information most of us now get online - weather, stocks, sports ticker, movie listings, etc.

--An expansive local section, broken down per page by neighborhood, each page managed by a paid employee but entirely staffed by citizen journalists. Instead of our usual definition of "local" news, this could almost be considered "hyperlocal" - a dozen reporters in each tiny neighborhood, reporting on what are usually small-town matters like broken stoplights, a recent public arrest, neighborhood school events, etc. To avoid past problems with such projects, formalize the citizen-journalist relationship: make reporters take basic training at your office, submit sample articles before approval, have articles checked by professional journalist for basic issues before running. Each page then effectively becomes a publication of its own just for that neighborhood, while tying it together with the larger daily tabloid and national portal.

--A classified-ad section at the same website, run the same simple and powerful way as a place like Craigslist. Run the code necessary to automatically tie ad listings to a real-time Google map, like what already exists. Free for all except car dealers and real-estate agents, like how Craigslist does it.

After that, then, you simply create a rate plan for your advertisers that reflects this hybrid construction - one simple fee, for example, for X amount of print ads, X amount of banner ads at the portal, X amount of contextually-based ads (like you see at Google) in the local section, plus X amount of classified advertising. And then of course tie all these media together in your audience's mind as much as possible - like print only half an interview in the paper edition, for example, then direct readers to the web for the other half, like how the Onion often does things. If a news company was to really do this, to legitimately execute such a plan in the way it needs to be done, with a new kind of executive structure that can handle all these media and keep all departments in communication, then that company would officially have one gazillion audience members, and advertisers just pissing all over themselves, trying to get space in that multimedia hybrid monster.

So will something like this actually happen soon? Hmm, that's the interesting question, isn't it? To be sure, there are small organizations out there right now, more than happy to peel off one of these services after another from the big news companies - take the aforementioned Craigslist, for example, and how their San Francisco edition has been the cause of some ridiculous drop in classified ads from Bay area newspapers, something like 60 percent in the last three years or so. Then add the Bayosphere, for example, who are building one of these 'hyperlocal' news sites for San Franciscans that I was talking about, right under the noses of the papers out there unwilling to do such a thing themselves. That's the problem with all these big dinosaurs in the first place - they've spent decades saying, "That's not how we want the world to work, so we're going to make sure that that's not how the world works." Anytime a new technology comes along, though, that lets start-ups come in and legitimately challenge the way the world works, these dinosaurs are forced to change with them whether they like it or not. And since these dinosaurs have spent decades in this siege mentality where nothing changes...and since they drove away all the people qualified to implement these changes in the first place (often right into the arms of the start-ups challenging them - take the founder of the Bayosphere, for example, who used to be an award-winning reporter for the San Jose Mercury News)...it means these big companies are even more fucked than they were already. And they were pretty fucked already, let's admit it.

So we'll see, I guess, and I guess it goes without saying that I find it all just so fascinating to watch and follow along with these days. And in the meanwhile - seriously, red tabloid staffs, just in case this entry somehow makes it to your attention, could you please try to make your publications at least a tiny bit less moronic than they are now? I and the rest of the Youth of Chicago thank you kindly.

And as long as I have your attention, mainstream media - please, for God's sake, no more articles ever again along the lines of, "Can you believe a college is offering a class on 'The Simpsons?' That's CRAZY!" Well, no, I do believe it, and it isn't that crazy, because there are over a dozen colleges now that offer such a course, and every time another one does, you write another article about how crazy it is that they're doing so. Fuck, I get it, it's crazy! It's all so goddamn crazy!!! It reminds me of what Jessa Crispin has complained about before over at Bookslut.com - how she never wants to read another article again that starts, "Comic books - they're not just for kids anymore!" Hey, I got news for you - they haven't been just for kids since 1985. And I know that because you fucking told me yourselves way back in 1985 when it first happened, so I don't need you twenty years later still telling me! I get it! It's crazy, man, crazy!!!