Ryan Sholin says our real competitors are not the TV news anchors or rival newspapers, but rather the Web itself.

And he’s right. Newspapers have to compete with everything on the Web for eyeballs. Face it: users consuming anything other than your product is not helping your bottom line. So, if users are spending time on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, IM, etc, etc, etc, you have to compete with that.

Everyone does.

That means we have to compete with companies that have far greater technical talent than newspapers do. You have to compete with people who make compelling Web applications. That’s real competition.

The only way to grab users eyeballs is by making compelling Web content — not by repurposing stale print content. Sholin hopes you or your colleagues haven’t thought or said these phrases recently:

If you’ve said the words ‘Oh, well we’ve always done it that way’ in the last FIVE YEARS, you have a problem with addressing the question of who is competing with your organization.

If you’ve said the words ‘Oh, but that won’t work here’ in the last THREE YEARS, you definitely have a problem with addressing the pace of change in the news business.

Does your newspaper recognize its real competition or does management still believe other dying companies are all they have to look out for?