No blood in ants

Ants have no blood -- an interesting look at the Philly newspaper situation from 300 miles away.

Meanwhile, I realize that people who seriously care about reforming journalism are a handful within the handful of folks who come here every day, but if you are one of thiose brave few who are interested in the future and recent past of newsrooms, I urge you to read this speech by John Temple, who was editor of the recently collapsed Rocky Mountain News in Denver. There's a lot of great insight into how inertia, small-time in-house rivalries and incredibly short-term thinking prevented what seemed so obvious to all, a focus on the Internet, from happening. This is just one of a number of good points he makes:

The question is why would talented people want to join companies that are held back by their past? I think that's a real problem for legacy media organizations. Smart, talented people have choices. And it's hard to imagine the best and brightest in advertising, for example, wanting to join a newspaper online operation when they could be working in a pure play environment.

There is a future for news, but it probably looks more like this experiment in San Francisco than anything you're used to now.