Here's some food for thought:

"According to a recent study by Forrester Research, blogs and newspaper Web sites now have the same audience share—about 17 percent—among Internet users between the ages of 18 and 24."

Wow, that's huge. Even though people in the 18-to-24 age group aren't big newspaper readers to begin with, that's a pretty stunning statistic when you consider that those kids would be the newspaper subscribers of tomorrow. Now, instead of turning to the "official" sources, they're just as likely to turn to bloggers for their news.

Everywhere you look, the power that used to be consolidated in the hands of publishers is being distributed to those that used to be considered mere consumers of media.

From general knowledge sites like Wikipedia, to niche content sites like Minti, to wildly popular sites such as YouTube and Flickr, people are turning in droves to sites where other readers create and share content.

Factor in popular tech sites like Digg, music sites like CChits, and even journalism sites like OhMyNews, and it's as if Web users are creating their own newspapers without any editorial intervention beyond themselves.

But so what, right? That's been going on for a while. The popularity of this type of media is growing, but are these sites really going to challenge the traditional publishing models? Aren't people going to still go to sites they know and trust for their news?

Sort of.

See, the biggest change of all that's happening is that content is rapidly becoming free-floating. As more and more people turn to blogs, social news sites and news aggregators (such as the increasingly popular Popurls.com), less and less of them are going to be going to "publications" first. And why should they? Going to any particular publication means limiting yourself to a tiny subset of the content available on the Web.

On the other hand, heading over to a blog, a social news site or an aggregator means that you're going to get your news and information from a net cast wide across the Web. The effect of this trend is to make publications less and less important and the content itself (in the form of articles) the thing that draws people in.

The implications of all of this means a major paradigm shift for the publishing industry. Traditionally publishers were the ones who took the risk associated with providing infrastructure (either print or electronic), hiring authors and setting editorial direction. Money flowed from readers (in the form of subscriptions) and advertisers (for exposure) through the publisher to the editor, and eventually the writer. Each of these intermediaries took a cut and the authors were traditionally left with what was left over. The publication survived on the merits of its content because content was inextricably linked to the publication itself.

Now this model makes less and less sense. Publishers may want to be the aggregators and arbiters of content (and want to be compensated for this role), but their role is being usurped by the bloggers, posters and aggregators. Publishers may think that their content is tied to their publication, but it really isn't—for all intents and purposes, unless the content is behind a subscription wall, it's free-floating as soon as it hits the Web. Reader loyalty is dead.

So what should publishers do about this? Here are seven suggestions:

1. Embrace what's happening. Seed the aggregators and social news sites with your content. Woo influential bloggers by letting them know what you're publishing so that they can link to it. Reciprocate by sending readers their way.

2. Fight what's happening. This might sound counterintuitive, but if you can generate proprietary content that can only be accessed by those willing to pay for it, you can generate revenue and keep loyal readers. Of course, the content better be worth it and only available on your site.

3. Tie advertising to individual articles rather than the entire publication. Search advertising works because of its relevance links to the content users are searching for. Do the same thing with your content.

4. Always assume readers aren't going to come through the front door. Set up your content so that one article can "cross-sell" to others, drawing readers deeper into the site. Always make sure that articles are associated and cross-linked, providing relevance to readers entering due to a link they followed from an aggregator site. Also, make sure that readers entering via one article instantly know what else is on the site.

5. Embrace personality. "News" has become a commodity. Personality, opinion and creativity can never be commodities. Generate loyalty to your individual writers, not just the news on your site.

6. Brand is everything. The digital music revolution has made music publishers realize that they're really advertising agencies for their artists as well as short-hand indicators of taste for their consumers—not producers and distributors of plastic discs. Online publishers need to establish the same kinds of brand recognition or risk irrelevance.

7. Compensate authors based on the traffic their articles generate. Authors might hate this at first, but if their checks go up because they're generating lots of links to the site and getting commissions on traffic, they might begin to think differently. Assume a base and then reward them when they go over that base for traffic.

Publishing as we know it might be dying, but that doesn't mean that publishers are dead. We just need to adapt.

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