News-Record.com

So does Terry Heaton, commenting after the recent Online News Association annual conference:

While I agree ... that there are individuals within the mainstream trying to innovate, I just cannot believe that real change will come from within. This is not some wild belief that I carry; it's based on my day-to-day experience in dealing with people in media companies, especially those in high places. The essential problem is that there just isn't time for the "story as old as business itself." We cannot play "business as usual" in the face of these types of disruptive technologies.

The constant anthem expressed in this blog is that collapse will come upon the mainstream like a thief in the night and that one day soon, these same high placed executives will wake up and everything will be gone. You may think I'm overstating that (because, after all, they're still making a lot of money), and that's fine. I think what's happening in our culture is far bigger than most people realize and that our economy is a lot weaker than most suspect. I would love to be proven wrong.

I have been guilty of flaming the fires that separate, and I accept any criticism that comes along about that. In real life, I'm much more into bringing people together than in dividing people. The anger and passion expressed here isn't intended to be personal. But mass media is dying, and I have a lot of friends embedded in the bowels of the ship who deserve a seat on the lifeboats. Every day that goes by in which legacy media companies refuse to invest time, energy and resources into new business models is another day with the lifeboats firmly attached.

Not just new content or new forms of content, but new business models. As the old fable has it, we can be the ant or the grasshopper, and if we choose to be the grasshopper, the ant will be neither able nor inclined to feed us when winter comes.

And winter is coming.