The newspaper industry may be hoping Apple's iPad will be their savior, but just putting the printed word online won't be enough. The time has come for creativity and a new approach to the way content is delivered.

Jennifer Brook's interesting statement at the iPad presentation was somewhat lost amid the hype over Steve Jobs' new tablet computer. The New York Times manager said that her paper's iPad app had "captured the essence of reading a newspaper."

Brook may not have meant to suggest that the device was simply going to enable newspapers to be read in the old way. However, her comment is revealing: The people who run the most prestigious newspaper in the United States are not working on creating something new. They just want to be able to get their old products to the consumer using new delivery methods.

Yet that is thinking far too narrowly. As was clear at the iPad show.

The U.S. Major League Baseball, in presenting its iPad app, made it clear it wants to make the sport a whole new experience. It will be possible to switch between several video and audio broadcasts of the games. Users can call up the statistics on individual players and compare the game history of the hitters and pitchers who are about to confront one another. They can also trawl through an abundance of interesting data that might be relevant to the game they are watching. There were two aspects of the short MLB presentation that were immediately striking and that classic media companies will have to address once mobile devices like the iPad hit the mainstream.