Kudos are in order for Brandon Worley, the Stars blogger here at SB Nation, for a great Q&A with a trio of respected NHL media in Mike Heika, Greg Wyshynski and Bob Sturm this week. All three work in different mediums — print, online and radio — and as such have different perspectives on how hockey coverage is being influenced by the web.

I appreciate the honestly with which they answered, too. Here's an example from Heika in response to a question on a lack of respect for blogs from the mainstream media:

You have to have a certain amount of confidence that you are a leader, and newspapers have been able to fill that role for years. But I clearly think we have seen the humbling of newspapers in the last five years. I truly believe that respect of blogs is currently there for most reporters and arriving quickly for everyone else.

And here's Heika again on the future of print media:

I think the biggest flaw in the newspaper system is the time and expense it takes to get a paper product to the consumer. If I file a story at 10:30 p.m., my first deadline, then it goes through an editor to a plate maker to a press, to a big truck and eventually to a delivery guy. That takes probably six hours and a lot of money in employees and natural resources (paper, ink, electricity, gasoline). Or, I can push a button on my computer and send it to everyone who wants it — instantly and for little cost to our paper.

The internet system is clearly the better choice, but we have not been able to find a way to make significant money off of it. The sticking point in adjusting is that a two or three website staff that doesn't travel can make money, but a 50-man sports department that travels to every game probably can't.

I personally see this every day in going from one job to the next, the blog (afternoon) to the newspaper (night), and how news that's presented quickly and essentially cost free online can take up to 30 hours to land on a reader's doorstep the following morning (all across the second largest country in the world, no less). Now, often those stories are being updated as much as possible in the hours leading up to a deadline, but there are still those "dead" hours in between.

There's no question Heika's one-click suggestion is the more efficient one.

And when massively popular online entities like Wired are talking about just breaking even with their web products, you can imagine the challenge in monetizing something as niche as NHL coverage in the vast majority of the league's markets. Supporting a full-time travelling NHL beat writer on page views is, as of now, impossible.

Heika's right in terms of the business model: Newspapers, flawed and troubled as they may be, still support a much, much larger news-gathering operation than websites when it comes to sports coverage, and there's going to be a long, long process ahead to determine how that ultimately plays out. Publications will fail. (Web operations will, too, come to think of it.)

As someone in the middle of all of it, it's both frightening and exciting to consider the possibilities, as it's nearly impossible to tell what kind of an environment I'll be working in five or six years from now. Blogs are making progress, quickly, and the arrival of Wyshynski in a full-time role and SB Nation's growth in the past nine months are big signs of that.

Brandon will have Part II of his discussion up at some point today, and I'll have more thoughts on all this in the near future. It is the summer, after all.