This is a guest post by Sean Paul Kelley and was originally posted on his blog http://www.seanpaulkelley.com.

Call me a contrarian on this one. But I don’t buy all the hype that the internet is even the primary culprit of the demise of journalism. The primary culprit is the same as it is all over the country, in every industry and in government: equity extraction.

Let me explain, in short: when executives expect unrealistic profits of 20% and higher per annum on businesses something has got to give. It’s an unnatural and unsustainable growth rate. For the first ten or so years of a small to medium size company’s life? Sure. But when you are 3M, or GE? Unrealistic and ultimately impossible.

In the lead-up to this month’s Federal Trade Commission workshop on the future of journalism, the agency invited the public to submit comments for consideration. More than 2,000 people responded at Free Press and SaveTheNews.org, and a number of other organizations and individuals filed comments as well.

After sifting through the 300-some pages of comments on the FTC’s Web site, it was clear that everyone agreed on two points: Nobody’s happy with the state of journalism today, yet everybody thinks that reputable journalism is worth saving.

So how to fix the former so that the latter flourishes? The advice runs the gamut, and I’ve culled some of the most interesting comments for your perusal.

If 2009 was a year of study and debate about the future of journalism, 2010 must be a year of action. We must come together around a core set of ideas to create a better ecosystem for sustainable and high-impact journalism. Based on the various reports and conferences from the past year, we've compiled the five most important areas that journalism organizations (and those invested in the future of journalism) must tackle in 2010—and suggest some initial steps to begin moving forward.

What do digital networks make possible? First, they allow people to become active speakers and creators instead of merely passive consumers of information and entertainment. Second, they decentralize innovation, giving people abundant opportunities to create and use new applications for communication and creativity.