A failed experiment

I've been following a rather heated debate started by Scott Karp over at Publishing 2.0 on the failed business models of traditional (old) publishing. He's had some intersting debate, mainly thanks to his main challenge that newspapers aren't entitled to make a profit just because they think its a valued venture.

Or to quote him directly:

Nobody has the right to a business model.

Amen to this! The World is filled with people who had a great but failed idea. Why should the newspaper industry survive just because:

• "that's always the way we've done things"
• "that's what I trained for"
• "we helped bring down a government in the 1970's"
• etc.

Now I've already covered this subject in a post back in April "What does press2.0 really mean?" but to put it more succinctly.

We may eventually find that the profitable running of a newspaper was a failed experiment!