Ryan Sholin produces an extremely worthwhile blog on media change, Invisible Inkling, and his latest post provides five fearless predictions for 2009. In the days ahead I'll carry others' diagnoses/prescriptions/hunches about media direction.

in short, Sholin suggests mobile video will go mainstream, there will be more local startups (and larger local shutdowns), newspapers will be of the Web not merely on it, alternative business models will emerge and crowdsourcing tools will surface on the back of existing platforms.

He encourages others to join in the prediction game and to keep it positive.

Twitter now occupies a sliver of my day and gathers a healthy piece of pie of my network.

It enables our reporters to spread their stories and photos further and spread their network of contacts and tipsters substantially.

It is free, which is a good price.

I bypassed the MSN Messenger train and boarded the Twitter train, and it feels better and more intuitively networked for me.

Now there is a report from HubSpot on the State of the Twittersphere, and there are some impressive statistics:

- There are between four and five million users.

- Most have joined this year.

- There is a strong correlation between the number of those you follow and the number following you.

- Nine per cent have no followers and the average number of followers is 70.

Admittedly there are a couple of flaws in the study, which only measured those who had bellied up the TwitterGrader service from HubSpot and submitted their accounts for assessment (a nerve-wracking experience). And there might be an inherent interpretation about small meaning deficient in the Twittersphere, whereas a number of fellow travelers like the posse manageable.

A lawsuit to watch: Gatehouse Media, which owns nearly 125 newspapers in the U.S., has sued the New York Times Co. (owner of Boston.com) for linking to articles on its Web sites.

It argues against the Times' use of headlines and first sentences from stories on Gatehouse sites. The Times has responded by suggesting this is common Web practice. GateHouse is particularly upset that some Times sites compete in the same market, Boston.

The implications of this legal action are considerable in an emerging link economy in which one site identifies and links to content from another site for its audience.

John Robinson, the editor of the Greenboro News & Record, writes a year-end-feeling column on why he perserveres as an editor in challenging circumstances.

It's a basic guide to what drives people to work hard and play nicely in the craft of journalism, and it's a gentlemanly read.

New York University's Clay Shirky is one of the original voices on digital media. Columbia Journalism Review has an extensive interview in two parts (part one here, part two here) which he discusses the direction of media. it ought to be required reading (if a little rambling) for any year-end reflection on the craft.

There is much to glean, including much optimism. "There's always Luddism when there is change," he says.

But he believes newspapers took far too long to discover civic function. He believes they'll have to turn themselves into different business models, and he decries the lack of business acumen in newsrooms.

"If there’s any lesson in all of this, it’s that you can breed an entire generation of really smart people to not think about existential threats to the business if you want to.'

David Carr writes this week in Media Equation in the New York Times about a small New Jersey paper that shuns the Web. He uses the example to explore the age-old dilemma of fueling the decline of the print edition by releasing content online.

The three full-time employees at the TriCity News in Monmouth are happily keeping print in print and not mirroring it with a Web site. They don't want anything to detract from the ads and editorial, and right now, the Web just doesn't make sense for them.

While Carr's example may not be widely applicable, he at least reprises some of the issues print media face in moving to the Web.

Joel Brinkley, a former New York Times correspondent now teaching journalism at Stanford, proposes a measure to help the newspaper industry: Get an anti-trust exemption so they can collaboratively charge for their content online.

It wouldn't be mandatory, but it would permit publishers to discuss pricing practices without facing prosecution.

Before this idea takes flight, a number of commentators will quickly toss a wet blanket over it. The main one I see is that technology these days pretty well penetrates any firewall and the viral nature of social media shares content so widely that it's difficult for any news organization to keep control of anything.

It's true what Brinkley says: Online ad rates nowhere near approach print ad rates, and that poses an enormous revenue dilemma in the time ahead. But one supposes these rates will find their level as presentation improves, technology spreads and the effectiveness of online advertising matures and convinces companies it's a good environment for their spending.

I've been reading many takes on the decision by the Detroit Free Press and Detroit News to curtail home-delivery to Thursday, Friday and Sunday, to produce single-section newsstand editions other days, and to pitch heavily the digital editions.

For some it spells the beginning of the end. For some it seems a desperate cost-cutting scheme with no central principle. And for others it's a best-of-all-necessary-evils transition that might actually earn the venerable news organizations a lengthy stretch in which to transform.

In the U.S. context, it's a very serious move, more so than it would be in Canada, because U.S. advertising revenue is tied directly to circulation (in Canada it's largely tied to readership, based on surveys, not the hard circ number). And within the industry it's controversial for that very reason: It consciously pitches revenue over the side.

Ken Doctor's Content Bridges has the deepest look into the implications of the decision (although he doesn't touch on the circ/ad revenue issue). He looks at savings, circulation revenue loss, digital editions and new revenue streams through emerging vertical products. What he concludes is that the biggest thing on the table is habit, with the most questions.

Mark Glaser's MediaShift site has produced a very intuitively strong and instructive look at alternative business models emerging for newspapers in the digital age --- arguably the cutting edge of the most significant media issues today.

His options: blog networks, classified networks, crowdfunding, customized papers, hyperlocal ads, local portals, multimedia ads, niche sites, non-profits and paid content. All are explored in the posting.

It's a useful guide to some of the decisions ahead. As Glaser puts it, the newspaper of the future will have to depend on a variety of revenue streams to pay for its work.

The editor of the Los Angeles Times mused this week that online revenue exceeded the payroll costs of his newsroom.

Very quickly people have drawn conclusions of a new era arriving. In his latest post, Jeff Jarvis of Buzzmachine suggests it's time to close the printing plant.

Others I've seen on Twitter and elsewhere have suggested this is ammunition that a corner has been turned and new media has gained new viability.

 A few things need to be added to the jubilance, though:

1. A newsroom isn't simply about payroll. Its expenses are formidable, from the equipment it uses to the travelling it does to the office space it occupies. It has legal expenses to protect its work from lawsuits. It has all sorts of expenses for non-local content. It has benefit expenses outside of payroll. So, there are many more steps to go before newsroom costs are met.

2. A sales force is not obviously self-liquidating. It is a significant cost against revenue. The online revenue may equal the newsroom's payroll, but the expense against that revenue isn't.

3. A lot of online newspaper advertising is tied into print buys. Sever that connection and my sense is that a lot of that revenue vaporizes.

4. The disappearance of a print product does not force advertisers into the online space. First it forces them to find other print products that might produce similar results. In other words, the purchasing decision isn't for the brand, but for the medium.

5. A news operation doesn't have an audience merely because it exists. It depends on extensive and sustained marketing in a community, and that marketing is most reliably done by --- ta, da --- the newspaper box and the display rack near a checkout counter. Other external advertising exists (and would have to be paid for). And, of course, a newsroom often markets itself best by telling its audience --- in this case, the newspaper readership --- about the online activities. In-house advertising is phenomenally effective and important. Lose the paper and you lose that advantage.

6. No matter how journalists might think otherwise, there are substantial overhead or central costs to their operations: technical backbone to ensure they can gather and distribute, finance operations to ensure they're paid, human resources to ensure they're treated properly, legal to ensure they're compliant with authorities and laws, and on and on.

7. While it's true that an online-only newsroom would lose many editing and design functions of a paper, that's a minor measure considering the expense necessary to create  a properly digitized newsroom (video, interactivity, moble, etc.)

It's naive to think of the newsroom as a breakaway republic that can live on its own. So, hold the trumpets a little bit. There are still steps to go before anyone has the credibility to suggest the printing plant could be shuttered.