When David Carr wrote recently in his Media Equation column that “there is a rational argument to be made that the part of the [newspaper] apparatus that has a working business model, declining or not, should receive the resources”, he was talking about the print side of newspapers. If that statement seems remarkable coming from a dedicated advocate of new media, perhaps it should not when countered by Carr’s voicing of many industry observers’ concern that the online business model “does not seem to show a promise of returns any time”.

And it’s already been a while.

Carr reports on recent staff cutbacks at Conde Naste’s Portfolio and at Forbes and Fortune that weighed heavily against the digital staffs of those publications.

Actually, the backdrop for and real star of Carr’s report was the TriCityNews in Monmouth County, NJ, a 10,000 circulation weekly that brazenly scorns the web in favor of rich, lush print-only distribution. Says Dan Jacobson, TriCity’s publisher and owner, “Why would I put anything on the Web? I don’t understand how putting content on the Web would do anything but help destroy our paper. Why should we give our readers any incentive whatsoever to not look at our content along with our advertisements, a large number of which are beautiful and cheap full-page ads?”

Indeed, as Scott Karp and others have long noted, print ad dollars cannot be easily replaced by lower-dollar online sells even conceding dramatic increased online volume.

Of course, local “booster” and “reader” papers have advantages in recessionary times over regional and national publications dependent on corporate, automotive and other national account advertising. Carr points out certain quirks about TriCity and its founder that aren’t easily replicated even with similar local publications. And Carr is quick to note the success of the Wall Street Journal’s online subscription model and other “signs that the free ride for consumers [in online content] may be coming to an end”.

Speaking of business models and on a somewhat related note, thanks to Shana Glickfield of Amplify Public Affairs for referring me to the Extraordinaries , a start-up non-profit using crowdsourcing techniques to (in their words) “deliver skills-based volunteer tasks to people whenever and wherever they are available by mobile phone”. The tasks are interesting and make innovative use of technology and also the mobility of modern technology, from the mundane (“Confirming addresses for a nonprofit’s membership list”) to the determined (“Translating a nonprofit’s Website into a foreign language”) and the exotic (“Identifying birds for the Cornell Lab of Ornithology”).

The founders are refreshingly open about the challenges of financial viability for a non-profit, going so far as to solicit community feedback on an appropriate business model exploiting the best of non-profit and for-profit structures.

As vividly highlighted with the TriCity story above, it is exactly this problem of finding the successful business model that plagues the new media community. While obviously exacerbated in this recessionary time, this problem is nothing new with innovation. Just because you can do something faster, cleaner or cheaper might make it a fabulous idea but not necessarily a fabulous business. Saturday Night Live’s “Change Bank” lampooned the brilliance of brilliant business ideas: “We will make your change”. Clever and VERY funny, and when asked how a bank could make money making change, offering the one-word response “Volume”. Of course!

Jacob Colker and Ben Rigby, the founders of the Extraordinaries seem well-grounded in the challenges they face to build a viable “good works” business. Like the reluctance of commercial lenders to loan other than to the most blue-chip of borrowers, venture capital firms have been facing their own difficulties realizing returns in a spooked investment climate. Nonetheless, Colker and Rigby are cautiously optimistic about the financial environment for a socially responsible business, pointing to a story on the San Francisco Bay Area’s venture community discussing the uptick in venture capital funding to socially responsible firms and business plans.