That’s the point.

39 year later, the New York Titanic publisher explains to us, poor ignorants, something that all of us knew very well.

The question is why he and his managers didn’t start the transition from print to digital before it’s too late and the New York Titanic sinks?

Don’t blame to the newsroom.

They didn’t take any strategic decision.

And the publisher and managers either.

So, we don’t need explanation.

The New York Titanic needs action from the top.

Less memos and more demos.

And a new publisher.

Putting aside whether Sulzberger is a poor owner and publisher, I think you are much too harsh on the analogy. In 1960 Theodore Levitt wrote his classic Harvard Business Review piece, “Marketing Myopia.” He argued that the reason the railroads were in trouble was that they thought of themselves as being in the railroad business when in fact they were in the shipping business. Thus, while long haul trucking was starting to eat their lunch, the railroads didn’t get it. Since then, great railroad names have disappeared, the survivors have learned to go multi-modal and they are doing well.

Newspaper publishers are not in the news-paper business. They are in the news business. Now, Sulzberger and most of his publisher peers didn’t hear that message back in the 1990s when they could have gotten in front of wave, so they, like the railroads, have to play catch up. But Sulzberger is also right when he says we still have large liners, but their mission is different than hauling passengers across the oceans. And the printed newspapers of tomorrow will also be geared to a narrower mission for a smaller audience. I am watching the transition of Newsweek from a news magazine to an Economist-like opinion and analysis journal geared to a narrower audience. That’s going from hauling passengers across to the Atlantic to taking vacationers to the Bahamas.

On Sulzberger, don’t throw out the baby with the bath water. I can’t fault him for the analogy to ocean liner (the human tragedy of the Titanic put uneasily aside).