> if a newspaper company wanted to make a real splash on the Web, it would be better off inventing an original website—the next Business Insider or BuzzFeed—and not remodel its newspaper copy.

I have to disagree with Chyi here—"create the next BuzzFeed" is not a strategy; it's extremely hard, competitive and they don't have the skills to even attempt it.

That said, I think there's a strong argument for having never put anything online, or at least behind a strong paywall with no trials. That way they could have maintained an air of premium information instead of going head to head with a gazillion clickbait factory paying peanuts to underemployed college grads.

Of course the problem is this is all hypothetical, and if someone had made this bet they'd be getting hung out to dry based on the declining revenues even if they wouldn't have been as bad as they ended up being in our current reality. In other words, it was just too risky a bet to not try to "win the web" even though it is a race to the bottom newspapers are ill-equipped to compete in.