The day before the death of the telegraph was announced, First Data, the parent company of Western Union since 1994 (Western Union was nearly bankrupt in the 1980s), announced it was going to spin off Western Union into its own publicly traded business. Why? Because Western Union has become First Data's most profitable unit and it only made sense to deliver more share holder value by segregating its market power from the rest of First Data. In 2005, Western Union did $4 billion in business and showed $1.4 billion in profit.

So while the telegraph died, Western Union focused on a once small part of its business and turned it into a worldwide necessity -- money transfers -- transforming itself and ensuring its survival, at least until technology does away with cash.

I think there is a lesson here for newspapers.

After a couple of years, I lost track of J.D. Through a media blog, I learn he's now in Mobile and he's getting some attention for this cartoon about the state of the newspaper industry.

To me, there's some irony, because when Copley decided to close one of it's papers, not only was the wrong cartoonist kept, the entire wrong staff was kept. The Evening Tribune was by far a much better newspaper than the anemic San Diego Union.

As a dedicated Google watcher, I'm using Google's customizable start up page as my home page, and every day, Google serves me up three interesting quotes.

Here's today's quote:

Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock. - Ben Hecht

Do you think Google is trying to tell us something?