The Journal’s gain, of course, is someone’s loss – the Boston Globe‘s.

Sadly, this is another example of the continuing brain drain of smart digital leaders from traditional newspaper newsrooms. Many who have left talk about the exciting new opportunities at their new organization.

Dave does that – but, as usual, he’s also far more honest about another motivation: “I just didn’t want to live my life managing decline.”

Too true.

Lest we get too maudlin, however: Congrats to Dave for brilliant service to the Boston community for a dozen years, and best wishes on his new adventure.

As part of the prep work, I’ve re-read a hefty stack of posts about emerging revenue models for news – advertising-supported for-profits, L3Cs, non-profit structures, even the wishful-thinking paid-content model.

Running through many of the pieces was an irksome thread: A focus on single solutions. Most framed the discussion in terms of “what’s the source of revenue,” as if there were a magic bullet that can solve every operation’s money woes.

There isn’t, of course. What’s more important, though, is there never has been. In times like these, naiveté isn’t charming – and for entrepreneurial journalists, it can be downright dangerous.

No successful news media organization has ever relied solely on a single source of revenue. In fact, the most successful industry segments – newspapers, magazines and broadcast stations – have long had many revenue sources, almost too many to list.

There’s more elaboration – and a rough list of the different sources — in this deck.

Key takeaways:

-  Don’t think too broadly. Even something as seemingly straightforward as “advertising” isn’t a single source of revenue. There are myriad advertising products – each with distinct strengths and weaknesses, sets of customers and sales models.

- As you plan the revenue models for your own proto-business (that’s what start-up journalism sites are, folks), copy the best of traditional organizations. Find multiple streams of revenue.

(Lest this come off as too scolding: I think it’s fantastic to see journalists actually interested in this sort of question. For decades, most of us acted as if the money that powered our organizations was created by magic. Worse, some assumed that it was the result of their brilliant journalism. For a welcome example of incisive, if tardy, analysis, see James Fallows’ terrific Atlantic piece on Google and the news industry.)

Watching all the hoopla – on multiple media platforms at once – gives us all another lesson on the folly of the paid-content argument from some traditionalists.

We’re baseball freaks in this household. I’ve been a fan of the Minnesota Twins since long before the last time they played a home game outdoors. My wife jokes that she was born within sight of Shea Stadium. Our first date included a raucous discussion of which team had denuded their farm system more badly through stupid trades. (Hint: It was the Mets.)  The poor kids didn’t have a choice.

So as the Twins open Target Field today, I’m watching via the MLB Extra Innings package on Verizon FiOS ($179 this year). If I have to run to get one of the kids, I’ll be able to keep an ear on things via Sirius-XM Radio ($12 a month, and baseball is the only reason I keep satellite radio). As backup (or while traveling), I can tap the MLB.TV feed.

As I write this, it’s three hours before the game, and thousands of fellow Minnesotans are gathered outside the stadium. (How do I know? Webcams.)  After the Twins thump the BoSox today (crossed fingers), I’ll read every word I can find, especially on the Star-Tribune’s excellent blogs by LaVelle E. Neal and Joe Christensen. I gleefully wallow in the modern media soup.

Oh – and my wife sprung for a 20-game season ticket package this year for me. Yes, I live 1,250 miles away. Your point?

What’s hard to remember is this sort of overload wasn’t always so. (I had an extended conversation many years ago with a presidential candidate right after my team beat his in the World Series. We swapped stories about the insane lengths we went to – driving to the top of hills outside town! – to pull in games on AM radio skips.)

Not so many years ago that only a handful of each team’s games were televised – maybe 50 a year, almost all of them away games. The troglodyte owners thought that allowing people to watch every game would “devalue the product” and lead inexorably to declining attendance.

They made a couple of basic mistakes: First, they assumed that they were primarily in the business of selling tickets to games – not making money through multiple channels. Second, they thought that watching a game on TV was a perfect substitute for the experience of sitting in the ballpark.

Over the past 25 years or so – thanks in no small part to the phenomenal cable-TV success of some truly awful Chicago Cubs and Atlanta Braves teams – baseball owners figured it out. Make money by selling TV rights to every game. Split the games up between over-the-air and cable broadcasters. Offer those feeds through any possible medium (even video on mobile devices this year).

Do all that right, and it won’t harm attendance – it’ll whet appetites.

(Yes, one result of this is seemingly absurd contracts. But at least Mauer didn’t sign with the Godless Empire.)

Here’s what this has to do with the eternal (and infernal) paid-content debate: Newspaper owners who stubbornly insist that people will pay for news on the web because, well, they should are behaving like baseball owners of old.

The results speak for themselves.

Instead of fighting to wall off the web, innovate on other platforms – not just the iPad, though that’s a start. Figure out what consumers want in different circumstances, then how to use technology to deliver that information. They won’t always pay for it – but they will sometimes, and there’s an ad model out there for just about every transmission vehicle.

Give your audience what they want – when, where and how they want it. For God’s sake – Bud Selig doesn’t even do e-mail, yet even he was smart enough to figure that out.

(OK, Bob DuPuy figured it out. But Bud let him.)

In this decade of unparalleled tumult at American newspapers, that cynical line could have been the motto for publishers. Sure, there’s been lots of talk about “dealing with change” and “transforming for a digital age.” But when it came time to hire their top editors, the new bosses have looked a lot like the old ones.

That’s why Thursday’s hiring of Jeff Light at the San Diego Union-Tribune was so refreshing.

I’ve never met Light, but I’m in serious envy of his resume: Most recently the VP of interactive at the Orange County Register. An MBA from Cal-Irvine. Impeccable Capital-J credentials as a member of the Register’s I-team (Pulitzer in ’96 for fertility-clinic fraud, a couple finalists as editor).

On paper, he’s the exemplar for the sort of digital journalists who are needed to rescue what’s left of the traditional industry. I wish him enormous success in a difficult job, and applaud the new owners of the U-T for moving boldly.

Sadly, there are still too few such bold appointments.  Let’s look at the top 40 U.S. newspapers by circulation. Since the beginning of 2008 – a time by which it was clear that the Good Old Days were gone, 10 of those shops have named a new top editor.

How many of those 10 came from digital roots?

By strict definition, precisely one – my former colleague, Debby Krenek, at Newsday. Debby’s previous role was managing editor – but she ran Newsday.com as well (and for all intents and purposes controlled big chunks of Newsday.com’s business operations too).

I’ve probably just offended any number of friends, so let me add quickly: Several more of the new editors have good digital instincts. Both Gerry Kern (Chicago Tribune) and Russ Stanton (L.A. Times) were closely involved with their shops’ digital initiatives (Russ even had the cool-but-inscrutable title of “innovation editor”). And my friend Monty Cook at Baltimore out-Twitters me exponentially.  

But there’s still a difference between understanding it as part of your job and living it day to day as your entire job. Even if we give those three a mulligan, far too many of the other appointments smack of “stay the course.”

Two of the “new 10” had previously been editors in chief at other newspapers, for example. Three others had been in a variety of editing roles at the shops they took over for 15 years or more (one for 27).

 They may be terrific editors and decent people. But, symbolically, it’s hard to convince a newsroom that it must change dramatically when the top leaders haven’t been part of the digital groups that have to lead the change.

Don’t try, either, to argue that there just aren’t enough Jeff Lights out there. There’s been a significant brain drain in U.S. newspaper newsrooms in the past two years – and I’m not just talking about the layoffs of senior writers and editors.

You could populate a terrific news organizations with the digital editors who’ve left newspapers. In fact, that’s exactly what plenty of terrific news organizations have done.

There’s Kinsey Wilson, online editor at USAToday.com (and co-editor of the whole shop), who bailed to take over as senior VP and digital GM at NPR. Or Jim Brady, who banged his head against walls at the Washington Post for so long it’s a wonder he isn’t brain-dead (hmmm – might explain the Jets fixation) – and now is running Politico’s digital efforts (including their coming Washington local startup). Or Christine Montgomery, who left the St. Pete Times to become managing editor at PBS.org.

 They’re among nearly a dozen high-ranking digital journalists who have left critical leadership roles inside U.S. newspapers in the past 18 months. Their landing spots? Start-ups, major portals, the reviving digital arms of public broadcasters.

So congratulations to Jeff, and kudos to his boss, Ed Moss.

 To every other publisher, a question: Who is the best digital leader in your shop – and are you sure they were “out sick”  that Friday a couple weeks ago?