Like many other observers and analysts, I responded to Amazon (s amzn) CEO Jeff Bezos’ acquisition of the Washington Post by jumping in with some free advice on a turnaround strategy — a list of five things I thought he should do to try and reimagine what a newspaper needs to be in a digital age. One of those suggestions in particular has triggered a barrage of criticism: namely, the idea that the Post should shut down its printing presses. But that is the step I think may actually be the most crucial — and at the same time, the hardest to take.

The reason why it would be hard is partly financial. As Ryan Chittum has pointed out at the Columbia Journalism Review — and as others have pointed out to me on Twitter — there is a very real cost to shutting down the print version of a…