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Though I enjoyed Bill Richards’ vision of a profitable e-paper newspaper (via E-media Tidbits), the deeper issue was not discussed: flesh-eating extraterrestrials.

Let me explain.

If a newspaper’s content is compelling or useful enough, people will buy it no matter what format it comes in.

Making a digital viewing experience more comfortable by putting a newspaper on a screen you can roll up will not save newspapers.

Or put it this way: Serve me Christmas music on an LP, CD or MP3, and I’m still not going to be into it.

E-paper will not make the difference. Yes, it could reduce costs, and offer more sophisticated advertising services, but if you’re not aggregating an audience, you are of no use to an advertiser. The fun challenge is that the Web’s flexibility, power and interactivity makes it an incredibly difficult environment in which to aggregate consistently a significantly sized audience. (Then again, Attributor is providing the service to measure your content’s reach as an inadvertent network publication.)

Evolution must proceed in a way that reflects the changes in the value and utility of your information in a new and changing information environment.

How does a world of ubiquitous, inexpensively accessible, high quality (and low), shareable, inexpensively published, customizable and remixable information where you no longer control the audience (thus reducing and eventually destroying your ability to aggregate eyeballs on one presentation location, the current way value is created for advertisers) affect how and why you produce information in any format?

You are now one media choice of millions (billions? trillions?), all of them obtained with nothing more than a click.

In such a challenging environment, I think of the most basic question I can: Why do people want information and stories?

There are likely thousands of reasons for each person that change second to second, but to simplify, and because I recently saw “The Mist,” let’s choose one reason that encompasses many others: to explain the unknown.

Several of the characters in “The Mist” put forth different explanations for the mist enveloping their town and the irritating problem of people being torn apart inside it. Those explanations create a variety of benefits (and detriments), and are put to a variety of uses.

Today, people have inexpensive access to more explanations than they know what to do with. In such an environment, the explanations that will stand out are those of the best quality that also manage to communicate that they are of the best quality and that the best quality has value.

Imagine more and more journalists with a PhD in their subject area. To use “The Mist” analogy, imagine one of the characters had video footage and perhaps a scientific study of activities inside the mist. It’s superior information. It’s demonstrable. It’s valuable because it will reduce the likelihood of a tentacle tearing off your flesh.

How can news ensure I won’t be an alien’s lunch?