Today we can see what newspaper publisher Knight Ridder thought about the future, way back in the early ’90s. Also accurate!

Except for an important part it got wrong.

Here’s a Knight Ridder-produced video from 1994, where the publisher imagines a world in which people consume their news on something very, very similar to an iPad. The tech specs kick in around the 2:20 mark (thanks very much, Richard Raucci):

Tablets will be a whole new class of computer. They’ll weigh under two pounds. They’ll be totally portable. They’ll have a clarity of screen display comparable to ink on paper. They’ll be able to blend text, audio, and graphics together. And they’ll be a part of our daily lives around the turn of the century. We may still use the computer to create information, but we’ll use the tablet to interact with information, reading, watching, listening.

Prescient, no? I don’t knock them for being about a decade early on tablet adoption. Can’t get everything.

If you slog through the video to about the 7:45 mark, though, you’ll find a much less accurate forecast. That’s the part where the newspaper publisher confidently explains that even when people have access to amazing tablet technology, they’ll still rely on newspapers, published in a format that looks very much like the print-and-ink product Knight Ridder was publishing in 1994.

Recall that while the open Web wasn’t mainstream back then — Netscape didn’t release its first browser until the end of the year — the notion of the “information superhighway,” with on-ramps courtesy of AOL and CompuServe, wasn’t new.

But Knight Ridder’s vision of the future assumed that newspapers stay dominant, and they stay looking like newspapers.

“Retaining that look and feel is very important, because people don’t buy generic news. They buy a specific newspaper, with a branded identity,” says the video’s narrator. “For most people, a newspaper is like a friend. It’s somebody you know, who you have come to trust,” adds a Knight Ridder executive, on camera.

And here you can see why the newspaper industry was so very slow to adapt to both the editorial and commercial impact of the Internet. It was smart enough to see the future coming over the hill, but not wise enough to realize it was going to run into it head-on — that technology wouldn’t just change the way information was delivered, but the source of information, and the value of that information.

Seventeen years later, it’s still trying to get its head around the idea.

Jeff Weiner (pictured here), as BoomTown reported in a story broken by BoomTown Tuesday and also yesterday, will be leaving Yahoo (YHOO) to become an entrepreneur in residence at both Accel Partners and Greylock Partners.

But, despite a lot of speculation on the subject by sites like TechCrunch (whose curiously petulant lifting of actual reporting done by others–in this case, BoomTown–without any attribution is fast approaching pathetic), let’s try some more actual reporting:

Sources at the company said that Weiner will not likely be replaced as Network division head by one of his four direct reports.

Those execs are: Front Door and Network Services’ Tapan Bhat, Brad Garlinghouse, who heads Yahoo’s communications and communities arenas, Media Group head Scott Moore and Yahoo Search’s Vish Makhijani.

Instead, sources at the company think much of Weiner’s organization could be headed by Hilary Schneider (pictured here), who is EVP Global Partner Solutions, in order to better align Yahoo’s ad revenue-producing units with its products, software, search and services side.

Not having those responsible for selling ads in close sync with, for example, new content or software initiatives has produced a level of frustration with executive ranks at the company.

The setup would create more of a global product organization, with more integrated sales and product development.

“It would be nice to have sales in the room now, as we develop services, instead of totally separate,” said one exec at Yahoo.

Whatever the resulting organization, Weiner’s departure gives President Sue Decker the ability to more dramatically rejigger Yahoo’s top echelons to better focus the company on its stated objectives of becoming the premier ad network and a consumer “starting point.”

Schneider is a Decker favorite, having been brought to the company from Knight Ridder in the fall of 2006, making her a much later arrival to Yahoo than Weiner, who came in 2001.

She is very well-liked by Yahoo troops and is considered a strong leader at the company.

A move to give her more responsibility would also be accompanied by allowing Weiner’s reports to have more autonomy over their units.

It could also presage a move to make Decker the CEO eventually, with Schneider as her No. 2 and Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang as chairman.

Currently, the company is unlikely to make such a drastic change, especially since it is under siege in a proxy battle being waged by billionaire icon Carl Icahn.

Icahn has recently called for Yang’s ouster, in the wake of its failed takeover talks with Microsoft (MSFT), a fight that has tarnished both Yang and Decker on Wall Street and even within Yahoo ranks.

In any case, there is no timing on these moves as yet, as the company was caught unaware by Weiner’s plans, sources said, since he was on paternity leave.

Weiner had not indicated that he was considering leaving for good until recently, although many inside and outside the company had surmised that he would eventually leave after former CEO and Chairman Terry Semel did early in the year.

Weiner came to Yahoo with Semel and is a longtime protege of the former Hollywood exec.