Now that it’s been reported that newspapers lost $2 billion in revenue in one quarter, the obvious question is: where did it go?

As a colleague of mine noted recently, some switched to online, a portion got switched to cable now that it’s easy to advertise there, but most of it went away completely because real estate ads are gone (bubble bursting), car ads are gone (no credit available), and classifieds are gone (to the web).

Retail and business advertising, as well as auto and real estate dollars, will come back in the future. But where will it go? Newspapers? It seems unlikely with their strategy of raising rates while the audience is going in the opposite direction.

There is a lot of discussion about filling the void for news and information as news operations pull back to save their margins. But who will fill the void for advertising? That’s what entrepreneurial journalism is about.

The race is on.

Change is the theme of the day. Our president-elect made sure of that with his new web site.

Change can mean innovation. Or it can mean desperation. Many businesses are changing fast, forced to cut jobs and restructure because of the mortgage crisis or general economic downturn. That’s desperation.

Some businesses began the process of change years ago and now bear the fruit of their innovation. In the case of Cisco, the company “went from being the most highly valued company in the world to a cautionary example of the the excess of bubbles” in 2001. The global giant embraced collaboration and opened up the executive bottleneck that slows the process of innovation (and launching new products) at most companies. Today, Cisco is “a distributed idea engine where leadership emerges organically, unfettered by a central command.”

Journalism is changing, too, of course. But, unfortunately for mainstream news organizations, the business of journalism is not keeping pace. Steve Outing, in his 11 Points to Ponder as “crisis advice” for newspaper CEOs, highlights some of the specific areas of change to the business that will help speed this change, including publishing in print less often, broadening the scope of news and hiring a capable social media expert.

I would add one more: reinvent the advertising sales department as a digital arm of the newsroom. News and advertising should be working together on new product development. Working in silos has led to the imbalance between print and digital revenue. Collaboration is the key, along with a healthy dose of entrepreneurial thinking and willingness to experiment and fail. Fast.

If a huge company like Cisco can do it, surely the hometown newspaper can give it a shot.