I was having a discussion the other day with a friend about old media transitioning to the new world — a process that the current economic situation will (i believe) hasten. I have long believed that the main thing hampering newspapers, record labels, etc. is their premise that when the transition is complete they need to end up with similar or better economics. It’s as if they can’t imagine what the point of saving their business is, if they don’t have fancy offices and hundreds of employees when the transition is over. And I suppose I get that the business that would remain would resemble their current one so marginally that one could argue there is no point. Of course, at least they would have a business with momentum in the same general space they used to dominate. Now it’s just pathetic to watch them die slowly (and perhaps now not so slowly).

Since I have never owned a successful large business (and am still working on owning a successful small one) I’m really no expert on the challenges there. That said, I do know a dopey thing when I see it. One of the local newspapers in Seattle, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (the PI) has had a couple of their tech reporters writing blogs for some time. Specifically Todd Bishop writing about Microsoft and John Cook writing about the local startup/venture “scene”. Todd and John fled the PI over six weeks ago (in mid-September) to a local smallish business newspaper to start a Seattle online tech reporting venture — now called TechFlash. John and Todd are good guys (though I’m sure my compliments will ensure we get extra harsh treatment the next time we ship something) and their site is a nice way to check out the ever-burgeoning Seattle startup space.

But their site is not the point of this post. The two blogs they left at the PI are. My guess is that John and Todd noticed that their two blogs were generating a non-trivial number of page views for the PI and decided that it was an opportunity to make their coverage more than a tiny sub-sub-sub mini-feature for the local paper. Instead they’ve got their own site and their own brand. The fact that they didn’t feel like they could do this at the PI but went to the local Business Journal paper to do it also says something. But even more interesting is that while it took 2-3 weeks for the PI to replace Todd on the Microsoft blog, here we are, over six weeks later and John’s Venture blog remains exactly as it was the day he left it — replete with his picture and name on the column.

If the Venture blog was enough of an opportunity for John to leave the paper and refashion it into its own site, you’d think that the PI wouldn’t want to miss a beat, would staff it immediately (even with a temporary assignment), and maybe even start beefing it up to compete with John and Todd’s new venture. It’s like the PI doesn’t even care. Maybe they’re too busy monitoring paper and ink futures.

Like I said, I have no idea how to run a large newspaper, but I do have some sense of the difficulties involved in creating a popular website. And if in fact John and Todd’s blogs were getting some decent attention, it seems suicidal to me that the PI seems to care so little about getting them back on their feet. I wonder how long the Venture blog will remain this way. Should be interesting to watch.