With Newsweek bombing its digital transition, and The Washington Post demonstrating a decent, but not optimized, approach, it’s worth discussing how legacy publications can make the transition to a digital world easier on themselves.One thing I’m noticing more and more is the creation of new roles, like NatGeo giving its Editor-in-Chief dominion over print and digital content. But while aligning digital and print is almost always a smart move, new media requires more innovation that other media, like television and radio, mainly because the medium itself is evolving fast.That’s why more innovative roles, like The Atlantic’s new entrepreneur-in-residence position, are critical for any legacy publication looking to survive the 21st century media re-shuffle. Granted, The Atlantic hired Andrew Golis as entrepreneur-in-residence mainly as a way to grab great talent that it didn’t quite know what to do with yet, but it’s still a smart move. And not entirely original.For example, The Christian Science Monitor created a New Ventures Director position a few years back (and currently held by Matthew Clark, who spoke at our Subscription Site Summit). In that role, Clark (who has both an editorial background and an MBA) is able to work independent but collaboratively with both the editorial and business sides of The Monitor in order to create profitable editorial products.Interestingly, both The Atlantic and The Monitor are well-known B2C publications that are now expanding into the B2B space: The Atlantic with Defense One, and The Monitor with its World Report and Risk Report.Moreover, with subscription revenues — money that’s earned by satisfying readers and audiences, not advertisers — it’s crucial that the business and editorial departments talk and collaborate. Instead of evoking “separation of church and state” as a rallying cry, digital subscription publishers and editors would be wiser to take their advice from Lincoln: A house divided against itself cannot stand.