If a specialist says something that doesn’t “make sense” to the HiPPO, the HiPPO trusts his/her own opinion, not the thinking of the specialist.

BTW, buy $GOOG. They’re so far ahead of any other competitor it’s just stupid.

Angela Connor | @communitygirl

Thank you, Eric.

However, since when do we, who actually work in the industry, give credit to newspaper publishers and executives who actually think?

Prove it.

For starters, ask Conrad Black.

After 300 years, they still don’t get it, do they?

Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, I was a newspaperman. I became a pen-pushing clone and a carbon copy of one of those hacks in The Front Page. It was a “calling,” or so they said. Not bad for a kid from the Bronx (a Montreal suburb) with a grade 9 education and a way with the printed word.

I had a great time in 1962 B.C. (Before Computers).

All I needed was a bottle, a butt, a broad, and a clunky typewriter.

After all, it was the only game in town.

Today, I work and play in the Twilight Zone of communications, a corner of the Outer Limits near the Matrix of Neo and the White Rabbit. I blog in the company of millions, tweet my thoughts, expose myself for all to see on Facebook, and spar with Johnny Mnemonic.

I have become a WikiMan.

Sometimes, I miss those days when I was a newspaperman. Another time, another place, another life. Time to change, time to adapt, time to move on. If the Fat Lady visits me in the middle of the night, I’m not going without my netbook.

Conrad, are you listening?

“You guys are a dime a dozen,” Black said when I was a pup at The Sherbrooke Record.

His daddy left him $10 million. These silver pieces bought him newspapers, one after another. Greed is good, he said. He was the Gordon Gekko in the Kingdom of The Fourth Estate.

What price compassion?

What price intelligence?

What price imagination?

Conrad, like many others of his ilk, never learned that we have two ears to listen – twice – and only one mouth to talk, once. Although we (mere mortals) were paid to listen, we usually closed our minds to the bullshit.

Newspaper publishers, like emperors and certain software company executives, must be tolerated. Unfortunately, most operate on the simple-minded corporate philosophy of the right way, the wrong way, and MY way!

Ain’t it a gas to try to pull the plug on a Moss machine?

Meanwhile, Schmidt seems to have the $18-billion ball of wax right. I like what he says. I like what he does. But, for how long? Is this just lip service? Let’s go down the chain of command and see what we find on the floor.

And, that is where most newspaper publishers should start – sweeping it!

Or do we just have to wait for them to retire or die?

Neither.

Let’s hang ‘em in effigy in the newsroom!

The point you make it correct on one level – that hiring a digital expert and then ignoring them is bad; however, there are oftentimes larger business forces at work.

I found the best solution: meet with the CFO and COO. Get them on board. If you can *actually* put together a business plan for your product (complete with the economic models where you can run simulations to prove profitability), you will win the fight.

If you go in without the excel sheets and the specific content plan, you won’t – and shouldn’t – win that fight.