So an industry of middlemen, is being disintermediated by a new technology - the internet.

That's a problem for them, no one likes to go out of business, so what to do?

Their thinking goes: The internet is full of nerds right? It's like made up of nerds, and like nerds made it, so... internet = nerds.

Now if we can get some nerds on our side they could maybe save our industry. Imagine if you will that the internet is superman, and the newspaper industry is Lex Luthor, well a nerd into journalism would be like kryptonite!

Clearly we must offer full journalism scholarships to computer nerds and at the same time search for nerd investors. That'll save us, hooray!

An interesting idea I just had while reading this, just wondering if anywhere in the world does something like this. What about selling cards that are like game cards are for access to online news where newspapers are currently sold.

A lot of the general public would be against having to signup for a subscription to a newspaper online with a credit card or other online payment. I think a lot of papers online to are structured toward a model of drawing people in story by story from places like Google.

I a non tech person who still has an interest in a physical newspaper would go for a scratch card activated subscription service to an online paper structured more like a regular newspaper.

A newspaper? Creating an actually functional value-added seed funding firm? Well, I was about to snark a mighty snark, but I guess crazier things have happened.