We can do this

RevenueTwoPointZero, a research project put together by Alan Jacobson of Brass Tacks Design and Matt Mansfield of Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, has proposed some really solid ideas for how newspaper.com can find its lucrative future online.

Their work provides, I think, a checklist for what we should be doing.

The project offer solutions for how a home page can be redesigned to push people toward story pages, where the real money lies; how we need to beat CraigsList at its own game while providing the reliability of traditional Classified ads; and how a local news website can better serve small businesses without big advertising budgets.

This is exactly the kind of thinking we need, much more productive than the gloom.doom.com hand-wringing that really isn't getting us anywhere.