The smart, bold move is to get rid of print entirely. The costs of newsprint and other raw materials, production and distribution are enormous. This is the nut of the problem. When you take into account the fact that the vast majority of people under age 30 don’t read print anymore regardless of price, print becomes completely absurd and unjustifiable.

Cribbing an idea from the Silicon Alley Insider, what the Globe should do is shut down print entirely and provide every Globe subscriber with a free Amazon Kindle. The Globe could make a deal with Amazon to take a cut of any additional content downloads made by the reader — books, magazines, etc. Advertising could be integrated into the Globe pages on Kindle.

GPS could be added to the device, so that readers could be delivered advertising messages and coupons that are directly relevant to their location. Reading the paper in a Starbucks? You get a special on French Roast coffee.

Printing The New York Times would cost twice as much as handing out free Kindles to all subscribers, according to the article. I imagine that the numbers would be equivalent for the Globe.

As Nicholas Carlson writes on Silicon Alley Insider, “What we’re trying to say is that as a technology for delivering the news, newsprint isn’t just expensive and inefficient; it’s laughably so.”

Someone will wake up to this new business model one day, whether it be the Globe or some other outlet.