Newspapers are dying. Regional universities next?

A couple of weeks ago, Mary B. sent me a link to an op-ed in the Christian Science Monitor, where the author, a professor of history and education at NYU. He made a good argument for how academics can rescue the dying newspaper industry.

I suppose newspapers and higher-education is now a trending topic; the latest Chronicle has a neat opinion piece that explores some of the underlying similarities between these two industries:

Newspapers are dying. Are universities next? The parallels between them are closer than they appear. Both industries are in the business of creating and communicating information. Paradoxically, both are threatened by the way technology has made that easier than ever before.

Of course, my first thought was, well, hey I blogged about this a couple of months ago! If only people listened to me :-)
Anyway, he then warns about how regional public universities (hey, isn't ours one?!!!) might be in trouble if they did not look ahead:

Institutions that specialize in their mission and customer base are still well positioned in this new environment, much as The Chronicle is doing a lot better than the Rocky Mountain News (RIP). Tony liberal-arts colleges and other selective private institutions will do fine, as will public universities that garner a lot of external research support and offer the classic residential experience to the children of the upper middle class.

Less-selective private colleges and regional public universities, by contrast — the higher-education equivalents of the city newspaper — are in real danger. Some are more forward-looking than others. Lamar University, a public institution in Beaumont, Tex., recently began offering graduate courses in education administration — another traditional cash cow — through a for-profit online provider, with the two organizations splitting the profits. It's an innovative move and probably a sign of things to come. But the public university still looks like something of a middleman here — and in the long run, the Internet doesn't treat middlemen kindly. To survive and prosper, universities need to integrate technology and teaching in a way that improves the learning experience while simultaneously passing the savings on to students in the form of lower prices.

I wonder what a typical faculty (other than the ones in this group) at WOU thinks about such issues, and how much they see or do not see online teaching/learning at least as an important hedge against that same deathly fate that even the mighty NY Times is struggling with.