We're working on what this new ad sales model looks like, and we don't think that the big media guys have no place in it. Here's what we see: the ad sales rep who currently has a million dollar quota to sell print advertising will not be able to meet this quota by only selling for his outfit because as his print inventory decreases he won't have enough inventory, even with all of the pageviews his site enjoys. He'll still have a 7 figure quota, but he'll have to be a lot more creative on how he fulfills it and he'll want as much super-targeted online inventory as he can get his hands on. This means selling the inventory on his own site, on your site, and on other bloggers' sites. He'll sell some campaigns directly and bundle others with networks. Since the big media guys already have big audiences and professional sales teams with advertiser relationships, we don't think they should go away but rather they should adapt and join the ecosystem, as you say.

I was the guy there that made the point that all I want from the big media guys is, their subscribers, their advertisers, their best employees, and for them to go out of business sooner than later, we the New Digital News operations can start to claim some of the monopolistic turf they once held. There is no financial incentive at all for most if not all news papers and traditional media to embrace and “partner” with the new content creators. Even if you could make some sort of case that marginally there was a financial incentive (additional UVs and PGs?) there is no way that the revenue side of the paper is going to go along with it. If you are a ad sales rep with a million dollar a year quota to sell print advertising, how is helping some local blogger sell a couple of grand in advertising going to make you any money?

Newspapers are in the same place companies like IBM, DEC, WANG, Unisys, Data General were in back in the early 80's when micro computers started to challenge mainframe and mini computers. Old line guys like IBM either got wise to opening their platform up and partnering with these new eco systems that were developed, or they wound up going under like DEC, Wang, etc…..all did.