‘More Features’ Won’t Save a Dying Business Model

"The blogs and websites I read, the google alerts I use, the social networks I frequent, all give me this experience already today. I don’t need a newspaper to deliver it to me in one package."

That has a nice ring to it, but it's short-sighted. If newspapers (paper or non-paper) die, then we'd most likely see the wire servies go down with them. With newspapers gone and wire services gone, investigative journalism would largely die along with it because it is expensive and some of the best stories span continents. Many of the insightful stories we take for granted as being freely available and at our fingertips would just disappear and people reporting eyewitness events, information the government spoon feeds us, and "stories" that are nothing more than anonymous tips that are seldom second-sourced would fill much of the void. As we know, there are so many things that are never witnessed unless someone takes a shovel and digs deep. Also, hard-hitting journalism aside, where will you find people who spend the money to create pieces like this about architecture that I found on the front page of the NYTimes today? http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/11/27/arts/design/mu...

IMHO, you should be careful what you wish for.

I, for one, not only love reading papers online, I'm also one of the few willing to shell out what little my paper of choice will ask me to pay (25 or 50 cents a day?) to give me news that changes my perspective instead of news that just keeps me up-to-date.

p.s. - I agree with you about that mock-up shown in the video -- very uninspiring, but that doesn't mean that all future potential takes on the idea will be uninspiring as well. That's like saying that everything that can be invented has been invented. :-)