I think we're several decades away (at least) before the newspaper becomes something that kids learn in some elementary school history lesson. (And what will people use to wrap their fish or line their birdcages?)

But it's no surprise to anyone that the print media is in some serious trouble. Circulation continues to decline and more and more people my age have no problem with reading newspapers for free online, rather than spending $15 a month on the paper version. Newspapers' big advantage over online -- portability -- is quickly becoming moot as more and more -- and cheaper and cheaper -- phones boast access to the Internet.

While newspapers have built Web sites and have slowly adapted to the 24-hour news cycle, they still haven't figured out exactly how to make money in sufficient quantities to support their entire newsgathering operation. There isn't a single newspaper worldwide where the online version subsidizes the print version. Even for papers like The Wall Street Journal (which charges an annual subscription for the vast majority of its content) and The New York Times (which charges for access to most of its columnists), online revenues are a small percentage of their bottom lines.

I suspect that newspapers biggest challenge is to convince advertisers who are well-versed in the bang they get for their print advertising buck that the online "bang" is even greater. That hasn't happened yet.

Baltimore Sun columnist Jay Hancock had an excellent column last week on the challenge facing newspapers, and I think that he's got one thing right -- newspapers need to rein in the Associated Press.

Why do newspapers pay the Associated Press to distribute their expensive, hard-won stories to radio, TV, Yahoo and other enemies of newspapers?

Newspapers run AP as a collective, but the interests of AP and its members have never been further apart. The No. 1 problem for all media is promiscuous content distribution with low or no compensation.

AP makes this worse, striking its own deals and enabling newspapers in their role as content floozies.

Papers must regain control of their stories, hoard them under their banners and Web sites and stitch them to their subscribers and advertisers. If you want Yahoo viewers to read your stories, deal with Yahoo directly, as McClatchy newspapers agreed to last week. Quit AP or revamp it.

I think Hancock's got this exactly right. Many AP stories are little more than short re-writes of material that was submitted to them by member newspapers. When I was covering Vandenberg AFB for the Lompoc Record a decade ago, I often submitted 15- and 20-inch stories to AP -- which were stripped of my byline and the name of my employer, trimmed down to 8 inches and then appeared as 4-inch long briefs in papers across the country.

In this hyperlink-connected world, newspapers need to reclaim these stories when they appear online. AP can sell their 8-inch version to Yahoo!, but it should come with a mandatory link at the bottom of the story to the longer version at the originating newspaper's Web site -- at the very least. Even better would be to require these online portals to behave more like Google News. Unlike Yahoo!, Excite.com and others which post AP (and other organizations' stories) whole, Google News only posts the lede and then gives you every link that you might want to every newspaper carrying the story. Given that many of these links are to the AP version of the story, but at least Google is driving readers to newspapers and their advertisers and not away.

Newspapers need to learn to adapt, and they will survive. The question is how much will the newsgathering suffer and how many journalists will they lose before they finally figure it all out?