Old media vrs new media models – no economic model yet?

Alan Rusbridger reports on a conversation between facebook, flickr, Slate creator and NY Times and MSN editors. A divide in understanding still exists:

A distinguished magazine editor finally broke through the cosy bonding by denying that we could all have “both/ and”. It was “either/or.” We couldn’t run away from the fact that there wasn’t yet a credible economic model for old media owners to be dabbling around with the new kids on the block. So choices had to be made.

Yes, well. Safer to talk about the “soft” issues of community and blogging. A blogging entrepreneur drew a useful distinction between old mainstream media (MSM) which had attention deficit disorder and the best bloggers, who were obsessive compulsive. Newspapers started out on stories or campaigns and then got bored. Bloggers never got bored of their own subjects.

Read: Davos 07: ADD vs OCD : The future of newspapers is a bit like climate change: there are now far fewer ‘old-media’ deniers.