Few believe that newspapers in their current printed form will survive. Newspaper companies are losing advertisers, readers, market value, and, in some cases, their sense of mission at a pace that would have been barely imaginable just four years ago...
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In a recent episode of "The Simpsons," a cartoon version of Dan Rather introduced a debate panel featuring "Ron Lehar, a print journalist from the Washington Post." This inspired Bart's nemesis Nelson to shout, "Haw haw! Your medium is dying!"

"Nelson!" Principal Skinner admonished the boy.

"But it is!" was the young man's reply.

I'll wager that saddle manufacturers saw the end of their trade coming as well. And where have all of the secretaries gone?

Finally, we need to consider what will become of those people, both at home and abroad, who depend on such journalistic enterprises to keep them safe from various forms of torture, oppression, and injustice.

My guess is that online publications will eventually fill that void.

And so we are about to enter a fractured, chaotic world of news, characterized by superior community conversation but a decidedly diminished level of first-rate journalism.

Oh brother. There is first rate journalism, and there is the other 90% of journalism, which won't be missed. Blogs have a lot of first rate journalism, and a lot of crap. The cream floats to the top.

Beyond the publication of the occasional letter to the editor, the role of the reader was defined as purely passive

Still is and always will be. What we are witnessing is the removal of an information bottleneck.

Journalism works well, Lippmann wrote, when "it can report the score of a game or a transatlantic flight, or the death of a monarch." But where the situation is more complicated, "as for example, in the matter of the success of a policy, or the social conditions among a foreign people--that is to say, where the real answer is neither yes or no, but subtle, and a matter of balanced evidence," journalism "causes no end of derangement, misunderstanding, and even misrepresentation."

That is becoming more and more obvious as readers of blogs start to realize how grossly inadequate newspapers are.

Only nineteen per cent of Americans between the ages of eighteen and thirty-four claim even to look at a daily newspaper. The average age of the American newspaper reader is fifty-five and rising.

I know a lot of people who read papers because they think that doing so is an expression of intellectual acuity. Admittedly, it beats watching sitcoms and the nightly news, but just barely.

Taking its place, of course, is the Internet, which is about to pass newspapers as a source of political news for American readers. For young people, and for the most politically engaged, it has already done so

Many newspapers, in their eagerness to demonstrate a sense of balance and impartiality, do not allow reporters to voice their opinions publicly, march in demonstrations, volunteer in political campaigns, wear political buttons, or attach bumper stickers to their cars.

In private conversation, reporters and editors concede that objectivity is an ideal, an unreachable horizon, but journalists belong to a remarkably thin-skinned fraternity, and few of them will publicly admit to betraying in print even a trace of bias. They discount the notion that their beliefs could interfere with their ability to report a story with perfect balance. As the venerable "dean" of the Washington press corps, David Broder, of the Post, puts it, "There just isn't enough ideology in the average reporter to fill a thimble."

Meanwhile, public trust in newspapers has been slipping at least as quickly as the bottom line. A recent study published by Sacred Heart University found that fewer than twenty per cent of Americans said they could believe "all or most" media reporting, a figure that has fallen from more than twenty-seven per cent just five years ago. "Less than one in five believe what they read in print

That's because about half of everything you read turns out to be bullshit and all you can do is sit there and roll your eyes. Writing letters to editors is a waste of life.

Whereas a newspaper tends to stand by its story on the basis of an editorial process in which professional reporters and editors attempt to vet their sources and check their accuracy before publishing, the blogosphere relies on its readership--its community--for quality control

The problem is that very little vetting appears to actually be going on in newspapers. The blogosphere certainly does rely on its readers for quality control. But knowing everything you write is being scrutinized by thousands of people who can effortlessly search the internet and then come back to tell you where you screwed up, really helps to keep bloggers honest.

"User-generated content is all the rage, but most of it totally sucks," Peretti says. The mullet strategy invites users to "argue and vent on the secondary pages, but professional editors keep the front page looking sharp. The mullet strategy is here to stay, because the best way for Web companies to increase traffic is to let users have control, but the best way to sell advertising is a slick, pretty front page where corporate sponsors can admire their brands."

In other words, instead of having a biased editor (trying to pretend he isn't) filtering the content for you, each reader gets to pick and choose among the comments. Dumb asses are ignored or put in their place by other commenters, aggressive jerks have their accounts yanked.

...traditional journalists  ...tend to dismiss not only most blogosphere-based criticisms but also the messy democratic ferment from which these criticisms emanate. The Chicago Tribune recently felt compelled to shut down comment boards on its Web site for all political news stories. Its public editor, Timothy J. McNulty, complained, not without reason, that "the boards were beginning to read like a community of foul-mouthed bigots."

Sounds familiar. My theory is that foul mouthed bigots compose a lot of newspaper readership and comment pages for politics and religion causes them to centrifuge out.

In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world