Everyone seems to be talking these days about the death of newspapers. In fact, much of the discussion has been detailed right here in Bulletproof’s corner of cyberspace.

But, while the newspaper business may be in trouble, it is dangerous to assume that newspapers themselves are history. It all depends on how one chooses to define the word “newspaper.”

If you mean that bundle of cheap newsprint that gets thrown on your lawn every morning, kiss it goodbye. But if you mean the powerful newsgathering engines that feed the printed product, as well as all those hundreds of newspaper Websites and other emerging distribution channels, you are likely to reach a far different conclusion.

What we are seeing today is a newspaper business being disrupted by new technology. But, what’s happening today is really not all that different from what happened more than a century ago when the news business was disrupted, and quickly transformed, by  steam powered presses that made true “mass media” possible for the first time.

Out of that technological revolution came “journalism” as we understand it today. And the model was extended, more or less unchanged, when radio and later television appeared on the scene. Whether the end product was printed on paper or delivered over the air, professional journalists made a very successful business by managing limited newspaper space and airtime and by deciding for the rest of us what we needed to know on any given day.

Things are very different in the digital age. Today, the challenge is to manage abundance rather than scarcity – to make sense of a media and information environment in which anyone with an Internet connection and a cell phone camera can play the game.

That doesn’t mean, however, that big, well respected media brands are being swept aside. In fact, you could argue just the opposite. In an increasingly fragmented media marketplace, brands like the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal only increase in value.

Smart media companies have been looking beyond cheaply printed paper and embracing new delivery platforms for quite a while, just as they did when radio and television came on the scene and earlier when small publications catering to elite and limited audiences gave way to mass market daily newspapers.

Media companies that fail to adapt to the new digital, multimedia environment will die. But those that recognize that they are in the business of content creation, not printing, will survive and thrive on the strength of their brand names and their expertise at gathering and delivering the news on whatever platform the consumer prefers.