Bravo, Barry. Let's hope it doesn't come to this.

Howard: I'll grant you that a newspaper CEO may be unlikely to talk about a "far out" idea being worked on. However, if he/she was smart it might be good to mention that the company has some visionary things in the works or in experimentation stage, but they can't be revealed yet. That at least gives skittish (to say the least) investors some confidence that in a time when serious reinvention is necessary, the company isn't banking on incremental changes to get them through.

Some of the Newspaper Next 2.0 recommendations -- especially its call for transformation of newspapers into local information and connection utilities -- are pretty far-reaching and not just incremental. My sense is that there's resistance among mainstream publishers to that. I fail to see why the newspaper industry has not taken some bold chances. Perhaps they need to get yet more desperate before that'll happen? How many more layoffs will it take?

Jill: Despite the name, the comic is not just about "techGRL." "Lexi" is our 15-year-old main character (coincidentally the age of my oldest daughter), but her dad is a David Pogue-like tech reviewer who brings a lot of technology into the household, and he's an equally important character. So we think it's broader than being "just" a teen girl comic. We'll have both teen and technology themes.

Soon we'll be introducing a young woman as the Lexi character, so you'll hear her voice periodically, and she'll get added to the site. And of course we hope that the participatory nature of the strip and website (and social network components) will attract lots of girls.

Actually, there is precedent for comic creator "oddities" like this. The comic strip Luann, for example, is by a man. Girls & Sports is by 2 men. A few years ago I rented an office and my next-door neighbor was a guy in his late 20s who was doing a comic strip about seniors. Seems to be a long comics tradition. 8^)

As techGRL progresses, we hope to do some stuff that will encourage girls to become more interested in and skilled at technology. That conference sounds great.