* Newspapers were very lucrative for quite a while there.
* Newspapers are expensive to run.
* Editorial payroll composes a fraction of that expense.
* Online advertising revenues per visitor provide a miniscule sum compared to print advertising revenues per subscriber.
* "Unique visitors" are really nothing like "print subscribers."

Given those basics, it's very difficult to take a newspaper's massive P&L and imagine how you scale it down to an online operation.

My point is that I think it makes more sense to build the business plan for an online operation (or a network of online operations) from the ground up, rather than attempting to map online revenues to a deconstructed newspaper P&L. This might mean you'd examine each of the beats/topics/niches the operation would strive to cover, and you'd ask questions like, "How big or how engaged of an audience might we need to support coverage on this beat? What funding models might we use to support it?"

It might become apparent from a perusal of the posts here that I'm not exactly bullish on general-interest news myself. I think the value online will be found primarily in the niches — i.e. devoted communities on specific topics. I think the sustainable news operation of tomorrow will involve a network of these communities.

Next job is what are those communities for any locality. Consider that the number of active "fans" can be very low to start. But better 15 loyal fans than 1500 who sort of care. I think that was one of the lessons of Obama's campaign. Don't waste time trying to convert. Spend all your resources on connecting the converted.

But, niche publications for "fans" can be sustained. And sometimes the niches can actually be quite large. Imagine paperback books or newspapers focused on Science, Economics, Global Poltics and sold to K-12 to replace textbooks. Recent advances in Print tech make these products scalable. Tied to an XML content management system.maybe living in a wiki format, once an audience is identified Print products could be produced with previously unimaginable turn around times.

A natural niche are physical communities, especially in not major metro areas. I'm trying to get these ideas mainstream at my blog at http://sellingprint.blogspot.com

As far as "inverting the business model" I'm not quite sure what you mean. Are bloggers inverted business models? Are newspapers that cut costs and newsroom sizes until they have "few individuals creating enough value to be supported" an inverted business model? I'm sure you have a better explanation or example to provide.