They knew

Today's media execs are the carriage makers of the late 19th Century. People, and most likely some of those people were their employees, told them their product was dated, it's business model broke.

I remember bringing online ideas to management types, pointing out what at the time were minor Internet threats (if you're in any business, that's highlighted, all-caps code for opportunity), and stating we had to change how we did things. I, and others, didn't have the answers, but we could certainly sense that our high-brow profession was about to be raided. "If we do X, we can defend against Y."

It was refreshing and depressing to hear a similar story at Content Brides: "Unfortunately, most editors have been there, and expected that someone above their pay grade had a plan. Slowly, the realization is dawning: behind the curtain, there's no wizard, just Dean Singleton, Sam Zell, Gary Pruitt, Arthur Sulzberger, Mary Junck and other CEOs stuck in the center of a currently unworkable Rubik's Cube."

It's much easier to say and think 'I told ya so' if you aren't part of the group reeling from the 'so.' The changes many saw years ago are coming piecemeal. Instead of improving efficiency (an overdue improvement in many newsrooms), the wizards are adding duties, cutting bodies, disguising key content changes, and increasing fees for users. Look it up: see what that fifth wheel did for the carriage industry.