Either/Or?

Supposedly The Week, the weekly magazine, is publishing an edition online: Online Experiment for Print Magazine. Interestingly enough, Lexus, part of Toyota Motor, is sponsoring this move, according to the New York Times. Whether or not this will be profitable is still undetermined.
However, costs in production is certainly obvious. It appears The Week, which is part of Dennis Publishing, is making a significant example out of itself as a supporter of "green dissemination." Considering the approaching Earth Day, this move is cultural, economical and moderately "hip." Consumers enjoy the conscious company. In many ways, this allows for lucrative avenues for exploitation--preoccupation of the readers is key.
Regardless, this is an interesting step for a solely printed weekly. And its results could prove indicative of an advancing market.
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Knowledge@Wharton, a monthly trends report put forth based on a collaborative effort between professors at Wharton Business School, has recently published an analysis of the Washington Post's attempts at digital media: Web vs. Print: Online Successes at One Newspaper Raise More Questions Than They Answer. The Washington Post's online version of their national newspaper has been hailed as a premier example of what a media website should look like. The interaction with the reader is certainly admirable.

The analysis reports:

"You can chat online with reporters, watch award-winning documentaries or see the cherry blossoms bloom with time-elapsed photography. Wondering whether Jesus is the Son of God? Go to "On Faith," a popular multi-contributor blog where high-profile panelists ponder theological questions. Foreign policy junkies can find a similar venue at "PostGlobal," and true procrastinators will like the vapidly addictive "On Being," where complete strangers talk with warmth and enthusiasm about random topics like why they are annoyed by crowded elevators."

However, the revenue from the online edition is still a small percentage of its twinned print version. It still remains a force to be reckoned with. And considering the small amount of time that the internet has given media companies to "cross-over," this evidence of the Washington Post is, in some sense, prophetic of what's to come. Indeed, this counters many arguments regarding the commodization of IT related technologies (Nicholas Carr is immediately brought to mind)--the media industry is most relevant example of such possibilities and heterogeneity. The focus, perhaps, should be on creating an entirely new advertising structure devised from a business model unlike the "hard" version. The ability to advertise, as we have seen with various search engines and video-sharing sites, is best sought online when it's done in an unorthodox manner. And this manner can only be discovered, as Joel Waldfogel suggests, through "[sic] experimenting, experimenting, experimenting until something works."