Forty years ago, Arthur C. Clarke, with a film he co-wrote called 2001: A Space Odyssey about to be released the following year, was asked to speak at the annual meeting in Manhattan of the American Institute of Architects. Among the many futuristic predictions he offered were these glimpses that sound astonishingly prescient in retrospect:

Newspapers will, I think, receive their final body blow from these new communications techniques. I take a dim view of staggering home every Sunday with five pounds of wood pulp on my arm, when what I really want is information, not wastepaper. How I look forward to the day when I can press a button and get any type of news, editorials, book and theater reviews, etc., merely by dialing the right channel.

Electronic “mail” delivery is another exciting prospect of the very near future. Letters, typed or written on special forms like wartime V—mail, will be automatically read and flashed from continent to continent and reproduced at receiving stations within a few minutes of transmission.

That was in May of 1967. This week, Arthur "Pinch" Sulzberger of the New York Times finally got the message, according to Hugh Hewitt:

"I really don't know whether we'll be printing the Times in five years, and you know what? I don't care, either," said New York Times Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. to Haaretz Tuesday.

We don’t care either. The “we” are the one time loyal readers of newspapers. “We” are the “market.” And the market doesn’t “care” about carriages driven by horses, ships with sails, or the Pony Express. The market cares about demand, and demand for newspapers is drying up.

In his latest op-ed, Hugh wonders if the efforts to complete the newspapers' move to the online world will also involve a strategic re-think of what information is delivered. Or will the newspapers will continue to try to pretend that it's still 1967, delivering the same sclerotic content on a CRT instead of pulpwood? As one of Hugh's readers emails in:

Enjoyed this column. You touch on an important, underdiscussed part of daily papers' problem: They assume they are their readers' primary source of news. Hence the insipid game summaries in the Sports section (when, as you said, everybody who cares about the game grabbed all the info they need from ESPN and the Internet 8-12 hours before the paper hits their driveway). The same goes for Yesterday's Big Vote in Washington - it's ancient, but every paper feels compelled to cover it.

This is an important flaw because its root is - ta da! - hubris. Arrogance. An unwillingness to live in today's world, where by the time a newspaper is delivered, I've read thousands of words of analysis at the Corner, Powerline, Michael Barone's blog, HughHewitt.com, etc.

As Hugh responds, it's a matter of steam versus sail.