Today, I will focus on the future of news. But to do so let’s first step back to see where we came from, because that might make it easier to see where we are headed.

Yes, the Internet happened. It dramatically lowered the barriers to publishing. It created a vast new marketplace for information, a new marketplace that offers exponentially more choice than the world of print. A richness of choice that triggered dramatic changes in consumer behavior.

Think back thirty years ago to newspapers like Corriere della Sera, La Stampa, or for that matter, the Providence Journal, where my dad kept the presses running. You could think of them as the Internet of their communities. They weren’t interactive but they offered all the information one might need to live one’s daily life. Yes, the local news, but also all the mundane but useful information one might want — from sports reports to movie reviews to recipes to classifieds and much much more. Yes, mundane, but immensely valuable as a magnet to advertisers.

The vast marketplace of information that is the web changed information-seeking behaviors. Think about the differences. When I turned sixteen and was old enough to drive, my dad bought me a used car through the classifieds of the local newspaper. Would you do that today? You’d go to Craigslist in the US or Gumtree in the UK or AutoScout24 in many parts of Europe.

When my mom wanted a new recipe for Sunday dinner she clipped one from the newspaper’s food section, along with coupons for discounts on the ingredients. Now my spouse and I go to Epicurious.com, BonAppetit.com or New York Times Cooking. Or we order food to be delivered from an array of restaurants.

When I graduated college I found my first job in the job listings of the Washington Post. Today, that would happen on Monster.com or LinkedIn or Infojob IT in Italy.

The same for real estate listings. Our information-access behaviors changed. We go to different sources, different websites, different businesses. And, not surprisingly, the advertising dollars moved with those behaviors.

This has not been good for the business models of newspapers. As consumer behavior changed the business model changed. The ad revenue generated by classifieds, by movie ads, by supermarket ads is no longer what it once was. And it was that revenue that cross-subsidized the serious journalism. Hard news in general interest newspapers has never been a major draw for advertisers.

Some media companies responded by investing or acquiring new online businesses. In Australia NewsCorp owns RealEstate.com, the largest real estate listings site. In Germany Axel Springer owns Stepstone, the largest job site. But these businesses are separate. They’re on different balance sheets. Understandably they no longer subsidize the creation of news on The Australian or Bild.

Bottom line: the business of journalism changed. That does not mean providing quality journalism cannot be a successful business. However, the models allowing journalism to flourish will be different, and in the view of some, more effective than the past.

We are now beginning to see what the future of local news will be. Look beneath the dust and smoke of disruption and one can see the bright, healthy seedlings of the future of news. What do they look like? How are they different?