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Hey, Philadelphia Media Networks stole my idea!

Visionary. A man ahead of his time. Those are words that never, ever have been used to describe me -- but maybe this one rare time they should, after Philadelphia Media Networks, the parent company of the Daily News and some other publications, released its bold idea for the future. It turned out it's a technology-enhanced version of an idea I had back in 2009.

Here's what I wrote two years ago:

If America's battered newsrooms were smart, they would jump on this. I know what you're saying, and you're right: Newspaper companies have not been smart, not for a number of years. Even now we struggle to catch up -- a lot of newspapers are now ambitiously launching...blogs (or in newspaperspeak, "blogs, which is short for Web logs") even as many of 2004's hot bloggers now spend much of their day on Twitter. It's not completely too late, though, for some real outside-the-box thinking -- not now, when having nothing left to lose is another word for freedom.

Big-city newspapers should be giving away netbooks.

They should have teams of people walking up and down the rowhouse streets of a city like Philly, giving these newfangled devices away to people who've been left behind by the Computer Age, and perhaps also offering them at reduced prices to people who can afford them and simply want easier or more convenient online access.

In return, these news organizations -- you really couldn't call them "newspapers" anymore if this scheme were successful -- would reap enormous benefits, including a community-relations coup and a closer bond with newfound online readers, a golden opportunity for branding their website (the Web address could, and should, be advertised on the new device), and the chartitable operation could even lead to a new news-gathering eco-structure.

What my bosses announced today:

Philadelphia Media Network will soon start selling deeply discounted Android tablet computers packaged with four applications that will display digital versions of its two newspapers, The Inquirer and the Daily News, as well as additional content from The Inquirer and the company's Philly.com website.

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