Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales said last week he believes apps for devices like the iPad could be a saving grace for the news publication business.

For years newspapers have relied on a double stream of revenue: charging for advertising and charging customers per copy. While many have tried to duplicate this online, success has been marginal.

Recent examples include Rupert Murdoch’s pay wall for The Times of London website, which has had less than favorable results.

As Arianna Huffington noted in an interview with Business Insider this summer, it all comes down to what consumers are willing to pay for.

I wanted to comment on this article, posted on Business Insider Wednesday, because it plays into what I talked about in my last rant.

Eric Clemons, a Wharton School professor, and Nehal Madhani, a Wharton School graduate, argue in favor of putting strict copyright rules on news. They say this is the best way to protect newspapers.

The theory is newspapers will regain some of their competitive advantage if aggregators, like Google News, have to wait a certain period of time before posting their stories

Now, as I said, these guys are from Wharton, so they’re no dummies. Yet, they completely miss the mark on this one.

Online local news coverage has been making headlines lately.

All Things D reported Monday that AOL plans to continue full-steam-ahead with its ultra-local network, Patch. This comes just one week after the launch of the D.C. area news site TBD.com, which has already made some serious waves.

So what’s the big deal with local coverage?

Local advertising has always been the online equivalent of the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Around $100 billion is spent each year on local advertising in the U.S. Given the population ratio, the number in Canada is probably around $10 billion.

Mike Mandel suggested in his post last week that journalism may not be so doomed after all. In fact, he argues journalism is on the rise.

He backs this up with statistics that show non-conventional journalism jobs are growing, despite waning employment in “traditional” journalism sectors.

This brings up an interesting point. Sure, the old business model of newspapers is failing, but the need for public discourse, and the responsibility for journalists to encourage it, isn’t going anywhere.

The truth is, journalists can no longer be content with the conventional news grind. They need to adapt to this new (and very exciting) environment.

This is a little old, but I wanted to comment on it.

Business Insider posted a really blunt look at the newspaper industry last week and things don’t look so good.

They really hammer home how small online revenues are compared to print revenues. The New York Times only makes online about one tenth of what it makes offline.

A newspaper needs to cut their staff by about that much to fully transition online, just like the Seattle Post-Intelligencer did last year.