@saintjim: yeah, and the funny thing is the railroad business *has* been profitable over most of that time. All of the major railroads from the early 20th century still exist. They just carry freight now, and have consolidated names like CSX (instead of Chesapeake and Ohio) and BNSF (instead of ATSF and Burlington Northern). And they make more money than the airlines, most of the time. And without them, our economy would collapse. A train can carry many times more freight than any airplane, and almost all of the products you use were carried by one or more of these railroads at some point on their journey to you.

In fact, the railroads are hardly an example of an obsolete business that was forced under by more technologically advanced competitors - if anything, they're the opposite. They're an example of how an obsolete industry can reinvent itself and stay both profitable and relevant even while being mostly removed from public consciousness.

The newspapers could learn something from the railroads. What, exactly, I don't know - the railroads did get a bailout in the 1970's from the government (in the form of Amtrak) and that won't be coming for the newspapers. But the basic lesson of shedding unprofitable parts of your business and refocusing on your core work seems pretty universal.

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Business school profs have long tut-tutted the fact that not one major railroad ever attempted to start an airline. They didn't realize that they had to keep up with the times, right?

The only problem is that over the last 75 years the airline industry, collectively, has been a money-loser. Too much competition, too little profit. Likewise, it seems insanely difficult to come up with a way to use advertising to cover the cost of running a website.

Sometimes there just isn't a good option.

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