Excellent observations, Joshua – and thank you for bringing some actual economic theory to the issue. My favorite PowerPoint slide ever was crafted years ago by my colleague Owen Youngman at Chicago Tribune – pointing out that cable TV was de-bundling newspapers long before the Internet: CNN sliced off the world/national chunk of the audience; ESPN took the sports junkies; and any number of niche channels such as HGTV and Food Network took the features audience.

In a debundled world, the only hope is adaptation: Ensure that each link of the value chain actually delivers value. Easier said than done, of course – but it almost certain supports the theory proposed by Jarvis (and many others): Do what you do best; link to the rest. (And without reopening the tired debate, that line of thought leads, with certainty, to the conclusion that charging for content is a non-starter. Economic law: In a competitive market, buyers will shift to the lowest-cost product that meets their needs. Whether we want to acknowledge it or not, for most users, a quick headline scan on a TV.com (read: free site) trumps the “better” story that is behind a pay wall on a newspaper.com. But Hal Varian and Clay Christensen do a far better job outlining those economic rules than me.