This turned really long, but I believe it will be quite helpful. It has 4 themes: 1) Realizing what is happening, 2) what you are going to lose, 3) why this is happening and 4) at least one suggestion to turn it around.

I was also involved heavily in this industry, there's no two ways about it, you have to realize this isn't 'business as usual' any longer. The Internet is a revolution from print just as cars were from horses. Print won't be around a decade longer, and it's only embraced by those who still remember the old ways. Kids don't even bother, and older people are getting worse eye sight :)

If you don't adapt, you'll die. Frankly, you have already adapted too slowly. I think a lot of us sit back in amusement or get steamed about how slowly media is adapting to our wants.

While I understand the pain of such a brutal change, believe me, I made my money in media as well then went to nothing.. I had plenty of time to think about it, Even while I tried to adapt as my sales hit around 50%, it was still way too slow. (Mine died in 2 years, stopped making money in 4-5, but basically dead within 2)

As soon as the Internet was developed, you should have been trying to get on it, as should have I more-so. Now you're so far behind you are basically asking how to keep your old customers, and the Internet won't matter much. Time is doing pay for their mags and get online free which is fine, but they are still struggling getting new subscribers. For new customers, you need a whole new business model. They have grown up with free information, and 'worse', the belief that information ought to be free. If it is just information that is. What can you bring them they want to pay for? it won't be opinions and reports. They get that for free now, how will you convince them your opinions and reports are worth paying money for (and even a bigger stretch, worth paying what you previously had expected people to pay!)? You yourself can see everyone else adapting slowly but still dying. They aren't asking the right questions. They aren't seeing how the Internet is revolutionizing the world and how to contribute to it. You know you're dead when you're not trying to figure out your customers anymore, and instead stuck in the mindset of how do we 'make people stay with us'. We come from evolution, we either help progress the 'field' or we die. For some periods of time sure we can gain a foothold on the market with one innovation, but all innovations come to and end. Media had a really long run, they were the very few who were able to just do the same thing over and over again and in the process completely forgot how to innovate.

This is just how it is, there's no incentive to know what's going on anymore as in old times - the internet is truly making people more individuals. They don't care what you or I think is cool, they care only about their peers and their interests. This is why media is evolving into Niche markets.

Print is already dead in younger generations, and they are paying customers next year.The internet wasn't on until I was in college, and it was an instant sell to everyone in my age group. No one had to tell us, we all knew it and saw it's potential (hence the dot com boom). Cloaked in this revolution of information, are several residual effects, for example, water cooler talk has changed. It's not Seinfeld against Friends any longer, it's Game of Thrones -vs- Kardashians -vs- X-Games -vs- 1000 other programs.. I'm sure Radio stations wondered what they were going to do when TV started broadcasting. Some realized they must be on TV. But this is even potentially a bad analogy, as radio still has a use to exist (though an *incredibly* diminished one). Print media really does not. Before e-readers, yes, because it wasn't as easy to read, but with e-readers and with the growing problem of waste, storing heavy books, shipping times, environmentally friendlier (which will only get friendlier and friendlier as population grows and resources decline), etc, electronic media is what it will simply be, period. If you want to have a business, you need to start a new one and some revolutionary thinking like Amazon and Netflix are doing with TV.. Big TV is also struggling and hanging on thinking that they can do something to save it. They cannot, and because they are being slow to change, Netflix and Amazon are grabbing larger and larger portions of their markets.

You guys are supposed to be business men. The best businessmen, the Steve Jobs, are innovators. You can't just try to 'save' what you've been doing, you must figure out what people truly WANT, and if you're lucky you'll find a way to make money in the process.

But the fact is media is going to make a lot less money than before and it's simple economics. It's cheaper, and the supply is much much higher (blogs by experts, or cheap video (youtube)) , and the demand will not change or even decrease depending on how you look at it.

I'm sure you've heard many times that it is dying, but hopefully there's some insight here as to why. If you already know this then there's only one problem left, and that's denial. Because of such a long run, that's what life becomes and most involved in such a steady business surely aren't ready for complete revolutions all at once. But think about the economics, think about the future, and remember this happened to me - a dot com start-up guy, and realize you guys need to make huge jumps in thinking immediately.

All is not lost!

All is not lost though, I sit around and think about things like this a lot, and have many suggestions if you are interested. I will name one - think about how Google is solving debugging their software now. They are doing contests. This isn't just for fun, this saves them a couple full time employees a year, it does a better job in finding *and* patching problems, it gets them free press. This model of opening up to the masses is a great model, and one you must adapt to if you are an Intenet related company (and even those who aren't should embrace it's power). You may want to open source or start recruiting popular bloggers. You need that young generation, and they are already following not you. You can have current staff touch things up perhaps or start to advertise them as interesting people or have them start taking a more active editing roles for the new people coming in.

That's not what I meant, but kind replies are always nice. I understand the function, but just like most of us don't spend our off hours learning string theory and pondering just how small plank's constant is (at least, rarely), I doubt many of us keep abreast of experiments that use this type of precision or what truly interesting things that will come of it - at LEAST what truly interesting things that justify the seemingly inflated giddiness of the article.. Hence my dissatisfaction.

Just when you start to think you know everything you read something and fail to grasp it's significance and feel dumb or naive all over again.

Well, then you just hope it helps make a warp core.

Is this (another) failed sarcastic statement, or did I really just read that. I'm taking away the point that the world needs less true believers, and people need to stop writing sarcasm online.

Don't all newspaper writers wish the Internet didn't exist? And just replace 'Washington Post' with 'all' while you're at it. You're only supposed to read those when you want to feel sad about human stupidity or see 'legal' corruption in action.

The biggest threat to a nation is not other nations. The biggest threat is corruption and tyranny within itself as history has shown a thousand times over. Look what else he has shown - how hypocritical we (US) has been. I see it talked about no where, but do you think Washington will be talking about Chinese hackers so one sided any longer? Sullying a nations reputation from truth is one thing, but doing it hypocritically is quite another. What would u think of an individual person who did this? Would you not scorn him? Treat him like a bigot? When a nation lies to me, or treats me like a fool, I treat it as I would any other person.

I hate you. Good bye.

yah why don't we go there again and again and again and while we're at it, repeat all science experiments we did before, then show off our videos to China and Russia again and wave our flags and sing the national anthem and be gay. Or let's go do something more productive with today's budgets and do something new while we try to figure out how the hell to get to Mars.

Has nothing to do with the size, has everything to do with one mind (or rarely two) that run the company (or who no longer runs it). And I see correlation with how old they are (related to being driven perhaps). Companies aren't a democracy, when they lose their big innovator they just become run-of-the-mill from what I can observe.

Nothing like taking the most complex misunderstood piece of machinery and just throwing wattage up in there willy-nilly! Next thing i'll try is stabbing myself to hopefully become more pain resistant. Then eat some metal because I hear iron's good for you.

... 75+% of murderers (relatively easy) but only 0.01% of hackers (relatively tough) you up the sentence a bit just for the annoyance. :)

When most people think of math/computers/etc they think it's boring. You need a bridge to show all the great things that can be done, I suggest make games/mods using UDK/CryEngine/Unity (unity especially for new comers picking up simple javascript/C#). Does more than teach com sci, teaches various math disciplines, physics, it's fun, most people have played several games and can relate.. relevant to most people.. If i had to learn linear algebra without games to visualize it I would have been bored out of my mind. Visualizing and applying it in a game environment was the difference.