“There is a time when panic is the appropriate response.” - Eugene Kleiner of KPCB.

It’s about high time that journalists and newspapers start panicking. At least panic will lead to disruption, and often panic is the only way to forge lasting change. Too many journalists think that the Web has just brought on a transitional period.

It’s not. It’s nothing remotely similar to a transitional period. It’s a fundamental paradigm shift.

Howard Owens wrote a post about how journalism has radically changed forever:

This isn’t a “transition period” for newspapers. It’s a whole new game.

Journalists, editors and publishers need to radically rethink journalism and newspapers. What’s happening to the newspaper industry is not cyclical. When the economy is healthy again, most newspapers will be living on life support.

It’s time to panic.

Newspapers don’t need to just add blogs, databases and video. Newspapers need to radically rethink the fundamental product they produce and the business model they operate under.

Zac Echola says journalists need to realize the days of false scarcity (and monopolies) are over. The nature of the Web and ever-falling technology prices mean that competitors will increase over time due to falling barriers to entry:

Gone are the days of false scarcity (i.e. airwaves, static parks) and expensive resources (i.e. ink, paper and shipping) where the prices continue to rise. The falling costs of technology make distribution easier.

The barriers to entry for a newspapers are great. Two of the biggest costs associated with a newspaper are printing (paper, ink and presses) and distribution. Many paper’s spend more than half of their budget on printing and distribution — the kinds of costs that online competitors don’t have.

The barriers to entry on the Web are very minimal. Many, many people have their own sever space like me. Millions of people have blogs — most blogging services are free.

The only way newspapers can compete with this newfound competition is to be better than the competition. But producing sub-par online products, utilizing pay walls, charging for archival content and using archaic distribution channels is not a good way to compete in an abundant market place. Echola argues that content owners need to unbundle their content, allowing it to reach the largest possible audience.

Many newspapers are owned by large media conglomerates. They’re built for slow, glacial change. The Web is the ultimate democratic-capitalistic market place.

Anyone can compete.

That’s why it’s time to start panicking. Yearly mass layoffs may count as panicking, but they do not count as radically rethinking journalism. Nor will they break the downward trend that newspapers face.

One of the world’s most famous venture capitalists John Doerr gave an impassioned speech on climate change. Watch the video and substitute journalism in for climate change and see just how eerily similar it sounds:

We cannot afford to underestimate this problem. We face irreversible and catastrophic consequences. We must act and we must act decisively.