Recent interviews pit the views of programming whiz Adrian Holovaty against those of his boss, CEO and publisher of Washingtonpost Newsweek Interactive, Caroline Little.

During an interview with PBS, Adrian said that because washingtonpost.com is so separate from the rest of the newspaper, it hinders development of those nifty databases he so loves.

My preference would be to combine the teams, because there’s a certain level of overhead, like you’re not on the same network so you have to jump through hoops to get on the intranet. And there are cultural things, like you can’t get a reporter to do something because he doesn’t report to us, he reports to another editor. I can see how it was advantageous at the start to have them apart and let them do their own thing while the print folks weren’t paying attention. But now that everyone’s saying ‘the web is important and it’s front and center as the future of our company,’ it makes sense to roll them together now.

Little said just the opposite during a recent conference reported on Poynter:

When asked what the Post's online team does to make print-side staff comfortable, Little said, "We're very fortunate that our Chairman [of the Washington Post Company], Donald Graham, has been enthusiastic [about our online operations] and has not merged us back into the paper. They would just tell us what to do. Almost all the Web divisions of papers have been merged back."

So who is right?

Both are astute about the pros and cons. Separating the Web operations from newspaper operations ensures the Web side grows quickly, free from restrictions the newspaper would impose just by existing. Combining the operations does also combine the cultures, making for a more complete team and better journalism. But can you have it both ways?

Yes, you can, eventually. There is a time for everything. When newspaper Web sites were born, publishers had to pick one road or the other. Now your Web operation is an adult, ready to move into the next phase of its life.

The reason The New York Times, USA Today and others have started combining what had been separate is because the Web is now mature enough to hold its own when put into the same petri dish with a demanding newsroom.

If your newspaper took the opposite parenting route and kept Web operations within the newsroom from the start, then you’ve seen good cooperation but slow growth. So now is the time to separate operations. The intertwined cultures you’ve spent all this time creating should be strong enough to withstand the change.

Timing is everything. (Also know as: Adrian is right now. Caroline was right years ago.)