When News Corp. (NYSE: NWS) CEO and media baron Rupert Murdoch speaks, people in the media business should listen. The 77 year-old tycoon has built an impressive array of media properties and is one of the few who gets it when it comes to how media should be created, by whom it should be created, and how it's consumed by different consumer segments.

Recently, Murdoch indicated that the deeply troubled newspaper industry can survive only if editors and writers throw their egos out the window and regain the trust and loyalty of their readers. The once monopolistic newspaper industry now competes with the 24/7 internet news trade and its army of well-informed bloggers and citizen journalists. If the old guard doesn't believe this is the new competition, then I hope they have a second career all lined up.

Murdoch's words appear uncannily prescient: "My summary of the way some of the established media has responded to the internet is this: it's not newspapers that might become obsolete. It's some of the editors, reporters, and proprietors who are forgetting a newspaper's most precious asset: the bond with its readers." He goes on to say that the "paper on the porch" might go away, but daily news will not.