Let’s say you’re in an industry that’s facing the prospect of technological disruption. What could you learn from the news business, which has — maybe you noticed — had a rough time of late?

That was a question posed to Raju Narisetti, the senior vice president for strategy at News Corp, and Margaret Sullivan, The New York Times public editor, in an interview with Reuters TV at the recent International Journalism Festival in bucolic Perugia, Italy.

While Sullivan noted that “desperation has been the mother of invention for the newspaper business and the media business in general,” Narisetti said that other industries should not make the same mistakes and only wait to innovate until they’re pushed to the brink:

Hopefully, they won’t make the same mistake the news industry has made, which is to wait until you’re pushed to the wall before you start to innovate. I think the ability to innovate in advance of changes is important for these industries. The other thing is that as an industry, newspapers were never able to attract good business talent. We attracted the best journalism talent. And I think that’s been a big shortcoming as we’ve needed to adapt to business models, and hopefully some of the other industries are learning from that and are gathering their talent in all aspects of their business.

Narisetti also notes, tongue slightly in cheek, what’s stopping something like Blendle to unite all the newspapers in the U.S.: “Unfortunately or fortunately in the U.S., there’s this thing called the Sherman Act which prevents us all from grouping up together and launching one single product.”

Watch the full interview above; Narisetti and Sullivan touch on a few other topics, including paywalls, increased segmentation in the media, and more.