Contextual advertising was the mainstay of print and few knew better than print professionals how to place ads in the specific news products that would work for the advertiser. The premise was pretty simple: Know your audience then build strong, well-written, useful and interesting content to surround the ads that would be both serendipitous and useful to that reader. No reason in the world that the same approach would not work in the digital sphere.

What an arrogant, dismissive statement: "It’s an interesting point about the digital communities we form, but at the same time this is the most vacuous, unfulfilling community imaginable. It’s online, it’s distant, and it’s based on mutual self-gratification."

Sure. Good model. Humans are curious people. We want news, information and connection. Whether we get that from hieroglyphics or holograms, the platform is irrelevant so long as it exploits the best-practices for its time and culture. Exceptional content delivered where, when and how we want it separates a successful media endeavor from a not-so. I spent 40 years in traditional newsrooms and watched as we both failed and succeeded to make the transitions to today's platforms. I've spent the past decade experimenting with multi-platform content models, including newsletters. Two things I've learned: The right content targeted to the right audience works. And, until there is a sustainable revenue stream no manner of wonderful things will pay the bills. Dreaming new content-distribution models is easy and the audience is there. The revenue is there, as well. Unfortunately, tapping into it is exponentially more difficult than deploying content strategies.