AJR: Newspapers adapting to Internet. Really.

Rachel Smolkin at American Journalism Review writes that newspaper leadership won't just roll over and die at the prospects of the Internet, including (a) being disintermediated, (b) being unbundled, (c) having prices destroyed or (d) any mix of a, b or c:

[The] battle is taking shape as a willingness to experiment with form. An emerging weltanschauung sees newspapers as the engine driving myriad products -- from Web sites to free commuter tabloids to Spanish-language publications -- that can lure additional audience (those folks we used to call readers) and reinvigorate listless advertising.

Such thinking is evolutionary. There has been no easy epiphany, no "EUREKA! THE ANSWER TO MY PROBLEMS IS TO TRANSFORM MY NEWSPAPER INTO A MULTI-PLATFORM PORTFOLIO!" But the multiplatform mantra is gaining popularity industrywide, propelled by a conviction that a myopic view of newspapers simply won't work in a fast-changing world.