Steve Yelvington drew comparisons between Kodak and the journalism industry on his blog yesterday. His isn’t a new idea, but it’s an important one. And his not-so-subtle dig at Gannett stings (though I’d still like to remain optimistic about these kinds of decisions).

From “What newsrooms should learn from Kodak”:

Your business isn’t what you think it is. Kodak at its peak looked like a photography company, but it was really a giant chemical manufacturing company. Digital tech rendered the entire chemical photography business irrelevant. By comparison, newspapers looked like news and information companies, but they were really expensive commercial advertisement printing and delivery systems. If you have borrowed heavily to build and maintain capital-intensive processes that are suddenly rendered irrelevant, you’re in deep trouble no matter how smart you are and no matter what you do. Printing isn’t yet irrelevant, but it’s trending that way. This is not to the time to invest in a new three-around compact press line.