You could write more than a chapter or two on Sun.

Seems like a private den of inquity, 8 miles high :)

Great reporting, Irving. I'm always on the lookout for stories of disruption. It seems that once anything can be digitized, labor or services, the Internet enables the competitive forces of disruption.... Except Telcos, but that's because they are regulated, the government becomes a partner and a barrier to new competition. This could be our future.

I left the Financial Times five years ago and managed to improve my profile. I've been writing about my 5 year lessons here on http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/.

The Internet is making us smarter, no doubt about it. The quality of the arguments and information that can be found is astounding. And people are a lot smarter than pundits think they are, they don't believe anything/everything they read. The Internet is making our kids smarter too.

This is hardly succinct :) This is the crux: "If the logic of the Big Shift holds true, we are moving from a relatively stable business environment to one characterized by rapid rates of change with ever more disruptions generating increasing uncertainty and unpredictability. The economic imperatives and the management practices and institutional arrangements required to address those imperatives will lead to more instability rather than less." Things will continue to be unstable despite the tools, imho.

"The Internet Devalues Everything It Touches, Anything That Can Be Digitized" - http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2009/06/a_saturday_post.php But, just because we don;t have a business model for media online doesn't mean that we won't ever have a business model. When we do, the sites that have the traffic will be the ones that will benefit the most.

You might need to wear your tin foil hat more often :)

Lots of great advice here Jan. You hit on several kery issues, especially about newspaper's salespeople--they are resistant to change. Selling more for less is not a pleasant prospect for them. But you can always bring new sales people that don't have the culture of the old world.

Wow, teaching students of PR how media creates stories! I would think that should be a number one priority? That demonstrates the gulf between the two communications organisations: PR and media.

I'm not saying get rid of the press or news release, I'm saying lets have it in a format where it cuts down the work that is needed to turn it into a publishable news story. Most lack links and other online goodies and if you could deliver a package of factual information, easily sorted and in an online format it would be a better, more useable product. But you are welcome to keep doing things the old way too :-)

Morgan, your industry is like the man falling past the 33rd floor of a sky scraper "So far, so good..." Jam tomorrow :-) It's time for new thinking in your industry--but "you can't get there from here" because you have established business models to defend. That why it's an opportune time for a "new rules" PR company startup, imho.