• Allow adjacent newspapers to merge or consolidate (ex. the Winston-Salem Journal could merge with the Yadkin Ripple)
• Eliminate local media cross ownership restrictions 
• Allow in-market mergers (ex. The New York Times and The New York Post could merge. Not likely, but potentially highly entertaining to watch). 
• Grant the industry anti-trust exemption for a limited time 

I have to say that I agree with the basic premise of the first three, but it's the fourth one that cracked me up.  Here's the entire reasoning for the anti-trust exemption:

He's kidding right?  Right when the music industry is abandoning digital rights management because they saw how ineffective it was and how much it ticked off their customers the newspaper industry is going to try virtually the same thing?  I do understand where he's coming from, after all newspaper folks have always felt that TV news wouldn't exist without them.  Still, I have to point out the following:

• Now that they've let go a huge chunk of their reporters who exactly do they think they are in saying that they are producing the vast chunk of the news?
• How many newspapers link out to their sources when they get a story from a blog or some other online source?  The answer is very few.  They may cite the source but often it's a generic "a local website" citation that gives almost zero credit to the source.  What's good for the goose, etc., etc.
• Do they really believe that Google hurts them more than helping them by indexing their site and stories?  If so where's the data to back this up? 
• Do they really think that adding friction to the flow of information will help them? 

Sadly the newspaper industry is making the same mistake that the music industry made, only 10 years late.  They aren't recognizing the market for what it is.  They aren't realizing that whether or not there's a printed form of journalism is irrelevant.  Paper is a delivery vehicle, same as the airwaves and the internet.  They also need to understand that if they pursue the whole watermark thing all they are going to do is minimize their own exposure and tick off their customers.  What's important for them to understand is that instead of building walls around their news gardens they need to learn how to take their expertise and their (diminishingly) unique place in society and use every tool available to reach their audience.

I've said this ad nauseum: for about a generataion the newspaper's advantage has not resided in the printing press but in the press room.  The one thing they had that no one else did was a stable of people who new their city inside and out, new the players, had the connections, and received the phone calls with the hot inside tip.  Any monkey can type, but professional journalists know what to type.  Whether it's on paper, on a screen, in video or audio, its the what's said or written that's most valuable, not how it's presented.  There will always be people who prefer paper, but there will also be people who hate to read and what their information presenting visually or verbally.  Newspaper companies would be well advised to catch that clue before it's too late.

BTW, what they need to know to succeed in the future can be found here from Lex Alexander.