In early March, Clay Shirky, one of the brightest minds and most articulate voices on how the Internet has changed the world in ways incomprehensible to many, posted a blog that put recent newspaper industry turmoil into crystal clear, some might say terrifying, perspective.

Since the early ’90s, people have been talking about the different options for newspaper companies as readers began to move online, and how they can give their print products digital facelifts for this new world of new media, he wrote. Some say a micro-payment model will work, others hold out hope for pay-walls around their content.

“Round and round this goes, with the people committed to saving newspapers demanding to know ‘If the old model is broken, what will work in its place?’ To which the answer is: Nothing. Nothing will work. There is no general model for newspapers to replace the one the Internet just broke.”

So now what? “Now is the time for experiments,” wrote Shirky. “Lots and lots of experiments.”

Watch	Clay Shirky's talk at Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, explaining his last book Here Comes Everybody

To be sure, many media professionals have been trying to build new models for a digital era, while advertising types try to figure out where they, and their clients, fit in. But these are mostly big companies, encumbered with decades of institutional knowledge. For companies like that, change can be hard. Change at the speed of the Internet can be even harder.

Their experiments weren’t happening as fast as the Internet was exploding with new outlets, properties, tools and networks that excited readers. And when the recession hit—and advertising revenue fell off a cliff for entirely different reasons—those underlying problems were exposed in uncomfortable ways.

The old models lingered because they were still making money and that delayed a true digital shift, says Hugh McGuire, Montreal-based digital media expert and occassional correspondent for the Huffington Post.

And even when they agreed on a vision for change, they stumbled out of the gate in spite of themselves.

“Part of it is just the structures of those traditional media companies and the way they have run themselves,” he says. “It is very difficult for a newspaper to start experimenting with stuff online because their IT departments—which have traditionally run their websites—are not really built around these kinds of ideas.” Like Shirky, McGuire sees this as a time for more experimentation.

Nobody knows what the successful model looks like yet, but there are some things that are just self-evidently good: It is a good thing to use new tools like video and animation to deliver content in a richer fashion. It is a good thing to use Twitter or Facebook or whatever comes next to build engagement with your readers. (Not all readers want it, but lots do.)

“Some of the companies that are experimenting are doing it well,” says McGuire, citing The New York Times for its many podcasts, an iPhone app and most recently a new desktop reader, and the Guardian in the U.K. not only for the quality of its digital content but for its efforts to derive new revenue streams online, like Guardian Shop. “They are actually selling stuff they think their readers are interested in buying,” he says.

Beyond that, newspapers need to explore new ways to tie content more closely to the advertisers, even linking out to help advertisers make a sale, he says. “If you are writing a book review, it seems to me you link to a site to buy that book.” He acknowledges this would be a large step over the church and state wall dividing editorial and advertising. But that might be the kind of experimentation needed to figure out the right business model for this “new business of news.”

Watch	Shirky again, this time at the Web 2.0 conference in New York last September explaining there isn't too much information, the problem is "filter failure."

Jeff Anders and Ali Rahnema think they have a model that will work. The pair launched TheMarkNews.com in early May. The Mark, which will be ad-supported with no subscription fee, delivers news in a style inspired by Huffington Post but also offers more analysis and context with a Canadian point of view, written by a large pool of unpaid contributors—300 to start with a target of 10,000.

Traditional media have been cutting back on analysis, commentary and investigative work and that is the content news junkies—university-educated, upper income, marketer’s dream types—seek and, they hope, will visit The Mark to get. They also have a plan to capture advertising dollars which, to this point at least, have been slow to move online.

“The strategy behind our product is to work with marketers who want to reach a high-profile audience through non-traditional methods,” says Rahnema, a former vice-president of strategy and marketing at The Globe and Mail. “Marketers are looking for different ways to engage with customers... The world has moved on from [using] straight display and hoping for the best.”

Like Rahnema and Anders, Ken Hunt is confident that advertising dollars will eventually flow to popular online products. That’s why he and two other investors saved the financially struggling but still popular Torontoist website earlier this year. Hunt admits it isn’t clear how the site will make money. “But when you see a great brand that is growing with a considerable amount of reach... then you have to say that is an opportunity,” he says. “So even if the revenue model isn’t clear immediately, you put your faith in great people, in a great brand and then you figure out the rest as you go.”

While advertisers have been slow to move online, there are signs that is changing, says Fred Forster, president of PHD Canada. It is human nature to test things first and put a toe in the water before jumping in, he says. “But I think there is enough proof and there is enough learning that now we are going to start to see the shift into digital start to pick up speed.”

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Listen to Globe and Mail publisher Phillip Crawley's interview about recent changes at GlobeAndMail.com and how the Globe is trying to adapt in a new media world

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The reason, he says, is advertisers are beginning to see the opportunity to work with media providers to “shape the environment in which we place our advertising.” Display still has a role to play, but it is quickly becoming the “8-track tapes of the digital world,” says Forster.

Maura Hanley, Mediacom’s managing director of direct and interactive, agrees that once-reluctant advertisers are more willing to experiment. “The appetite is there to try new things,” she says. “Many advertisers have said ‘we can’t wait and see anymore. We really need to start making some real investments in these things.’ ”

“Part of the [reason] people are struggling so hard trying to solve the business model problem is that they haven’t addressed the content problem,” says Alan Stoga, editor-in-chief of the web-only, bi-weekly magazine Flyp (FlypMedia.com). “We said maybe we need to focus our effort... on that content problem and if you can change the content model in a productive, interesting, positive way maybe the business model will follow.”

New York-based Flyp has spent the past year refining its vision of a wholly different online magazine experience. “The core insight is a very simple one,” says Stoga. “Most of what is done on the web today could exist off the web just as easily.”

The rich palette of tools—video, audio, animation, interactivity—provided by the Internet enables journalists to tell stories in a completely different way but most aren’t doing so, he adds.

Flyp takes the very notion of an “article” and blows it up. It takes every key fact and insight and looks for a better way to deliver them other than with the written word. In some cases Flyp relies on the journalist’s reportage and insight to contextualize the story on one page, supported with raw video of the subject on the next page (and yes, you do flip pages with an accompanying page-turning sound), followed by a slick flash graphical interpretation, and so on.

For the moment Flyp is entirely investor supported. There is no advertising and subscription is free. There have been only preliminary discussions with advertisers but Stoga believes their model will be attractive to marketers.

The fact is online advertising is still very new, he says. “We are still in the very early stages of product development, of trying to figure out how to advertise in this media.” And clearly mistakes are still being made and early lessons aren’t sinking in. “Look at popups. They’re annoying and that is probably a bad way to advertise.”

In online the most intriguing opportunities are related to rich media, says Stoga. “The commodity stuff, banners, display ads... is quickly disappearing as an interesting solution to the business model problem.

“This kind of rich-media storytelling [offered by Flyp] is precisely the kind of platform rich-media advertisers might find interesting.”

So is it the model of the future? “I am not so arrogant to think we have got it and nobody else can get it,” says Stoga. “What I know for sure is what is out there doesn’t work.” Which takes us back to Shirky.

Even he doesn’t know what the future news business will look like, only that it will look very different from the past. It may be scary for some but all revolutions are. “The old stuff gets broken faster than the new stuff is put in its place. The importance of any given experiment isn’t apparent at the moment it appears; big changes stall, small changes spread. Even the revolutionaries can’t predict what will happen,” he wrote.

“Nothing will work, but everything might.”