It used to be that if you wanted to start a newspaper, say, oh, the National Post, you'd need a pre-jailterm Conrad Black and his investors to pony up millions of dollars for presses, trucks, paper and salaries. With that investment would come the expectation of commensurate profits. That's the deal with the devil high capital ventures make. The only way they can start is to get an early and large cash injection which in turn becomes an albatross when things go pear-shaped.

This is a story of two ideas: one's a drunk, flatulent grandad at a wedding, the other a zombie and both are counting on stupid customers for success.

First up, the Kindle DX.

Like the grandad, it's malodorous, inappropriate and needs to be put to bed.

When it was announced, Amazon's new big-screen e-book reader, the Kindle DX, was heralded as the saviour of newspapers. The larger screen real estate was seen as perfect for magazines, newspapers and textbooks. But, when it was launched there was a collective gulp at the price, just south of $500 US. That's a pretty pricey saviour, especially since that's before the cost of the magazines, newspapers and textbooks that are supposed to find a new home on the device.

What does journalism cost? That's a question that's being batted around a lot lately as the economic case for and against traditional newsrooms gets made in the press, on the Web, and certainly across well-polished boardroom tables.

Recently on J-Source Kirk LaPointe, the managing editor of the Vancouver Sun, argued that when the cost of news is sliced and diced a lot of pricey items like infrastructure, IT, HR, salespeoples' salaries, legal fees, marketing etc. aren't tossed into the mix.

In the past month a handful of mainstream journalists have sojourned in the foreign territory that is Twitter. They were doing early reconnaissance for their reading publics in an attempt to make sense of a communications medium that is growing at a rate traditional media can only imagine in fevered and nostalgic wet dreams.

Ian Brown, a writer I greatly admire, got it into his head that people Twitter because they fear death. His column on the subject is behind a pay-firewall, the irony of which should not be ignored.

I recently attended the BookNet Canada Technology Summit. BookNet is a non-profit organization that helps Canada's book publishers think through and use emerging technology. Many of them could use the help. Book publishing in Canada has always been a bit of a mug's game of small margins, big bets, scrawny long tails and bullying big box bookstores. Like the music business, it depends on often tawdry bestsellers to prop up the little gems agents and the employees of small presses fall in love with. It is a risky game of compromise, hope -- and fear.

Fear that U.S. publishers will ship directly into Canada and erode Canadian publisher' purpose or revenue stream. Fear that a financially-frightened federal government will choke off the IV drip funding the industry depends on.

This has not been the newspaper industry's finest month. Almost every day there's news of layoffs, bankruptcies and doors being shut on venerable old news institutions like the Denver, Colorado-based Rocky Mountain News. It published its last edition a few weeks ago after 150 years in business.

Here in Canada, the Kingston Whig-Standard has lost 25 per cent of its newsroom since the beginning of the year and the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star and other Canadian papers are shucking staff as well.