(Annette Moser-Wellman) -- If you want to see into the crystal ball of the future of media, talk with someone who heads the business development function of a media company. These leaders get the 30,000-foot view of how the Internet is changing the landscape of news.

One of them is Kenneth A. Bronfin, president of Hearst Interactive Media. You'll recognize the household names of ESPN, Cosmopolitan and the Houston Chronicle in the Hearst portfolio, but have you heard of E Ink and Idilia? These are media ventures hand-picked by Ken, who's charged with blending a traditional print and television company with strategic new and emerging technology. It's a role not without risk, and coupled with Ken's aerial view of new media, it's given him a unique perspective about the future of news and media technology.

On making technology investments:

"We look for companies that are developing new technologies and platforms that we believe will change the media world – or, as I sometimes describe to my kids, move eyeballs from one platform to another. That activity stretches across many forms of media. You're never sure what's going to work, but you can't wait around to find out. We get involved in the development of these new companies and help bring them to the forefront. We invest to own five, ten, fifteen or twenty percent or more in these start-up companies. We learn from them, we contribute to their thinking, and we make connections between them and our properties."

On a couple of bets for the future:

"I'm a strong advocate of E Ink technology. This is the display technology used on Amazon's Kindle and Sony's Reader. Imagine if you will an electronic display that looks a lot like paper. Just as easy to read as paper. It can also be as flexible as a piece of paper -- you could roll up and handle it just as you would a newspaper. We are now spending a lot of time considering the ramifications to the media industry brought about by E Ink technology. This should be on the mind of everyone in the newspaper industry – those seeking to save the readers they have now, those seeking to bring back readers that may have left or those seeking to lure new readers.

"We have an investment in a company called Idilia. They've developed substantial new technology in an area called word sense disambiguation. Very simply said, their technology determines the meaning of words in a sentence. Today's search technology can certainly be frustrating and difficult - and Idilia could be the breakthrough that brings about a significant improvement for the consumer. Idilia actually determines the meaning of a string of words – they are able to figure out what each word means in the context of the query."

Editor's Note: Things are moving fast. An E Ink executive just predicted that an e-newspaper would be tested by the end of 2008 and go commercial in late 2009.

On online community:

"We still believe that for a traditional media company, an ideal mix is a combination of editorial and community. It's what I call "curated community." We want our readers to come in and talk about a topic. Our goal is to have an editorial voice but at the same time intertwine the community's opinion. Quality community is very much the way our sites are going, allowing user-generated content to bring people into the story. We strive for two-way communication, and we're getting better and better at that. At the end of the day, it makes the content richer, it brings people back more often and it adds to the editorial content that's already been developed by our editors. That's something that advertisers are happy to put their brands against."

On the melding of TV and newspaper:

"We used to see our newspaper and our TV businesses as very different businesses with different distribution and completely different business models. Five years ago, Websites were only about text and graphics but now have video. So the intersection of broadcast and newspapers is here. People still see these as two very different industries, but the fact is they seek the same audience and produce the same kind of content. We send out our newspaper reporters with not only a pen and paper, but now with a still camera or video camera."

On the outlook for traditional media companies:

"I'm often the guy who's screaming to traditional media folks: ‘You got to change your ways -- now!' Most traditional media companies have been focused on meeting their quarterly earnings targets, but I believe they've been doing that at the risk of sacrificing the future of their business. It's only in recent years that the media companies have begun to endure additional risk and begun to make significant investments on the Web. You have to be ahead of the curve…"

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Annette Moser-Wellman is President of Firemark, Inc., an innovation consultancy, and author of "Running While The Earth Shakes: Creating An Innovation Strategy To Win In The Digital Age," published by Media Management Center. She teaches in MMC's Advanced Executive Program and Digital Strategies for Media Executives seminars.

This TechScout article is part of a new series of Moser-Wellman interviews commissioned by Media Management Center to explore opportunities and insights at the intersection of technology and the news media. Click here to view others in the TechScout series.