If the facts are simply posted without opinion, readers will supply a fair amount of further details as well as opinion (assuming the news site has done its job of promoting itself and policing spam, providing a good forum for online discussion).

When all is said and done, professional news sites and professional writers employed thereat will be reduced to the ad revenue they can earn by placing clickable ads next to their content, competing with the tens of thousands of bloggers out there doing the same thing.

“Bunny” is spot on…

Mike OHoro… I agree with you completely about the purpose of the media and good journalism, but how is Watergate even relevant to this discussion? Use one of the more recent Investigative Journalistic major stories to make your point… alas… not much there so far as the media goes.

There are scandals and outrageous breaches of public trust, just no media outlet with the doo-dads to report the WHOLE story. We get the “safe” version in our news. (Safe for the folks plundering the treasure and trust of the public.)

Your point is well taken though… and I think that IS the point. There is VERY LITTLE investigative journalism going on today that makes it past the managing editors.

There are good journalists out there, but unless they are backed by a media outlet that is willing to back them up when the heat is on, there is no cover for them, to protect them from professional and even physical harm.

Good journalists are out there… but they have almost no vehicle to channel their passion for truth and fact, and they have no cover when the s**t starts flying.

Most folks know that the internet has a ton of garbage plastered all over it, so far as reliable information… and there is a LOT of quality original content out there too.

This discussion started about newspapers, NOT journalism. Good journalism hasn’t gone away… it’s evolving with the internet.

Print media gets away with their little ruse because much of the time they do print “factual” truth. Unfortunately, it is often packaged as the whole truth, and frequently spins the story to the point of propaganda.

From the comments here it seems the folks who are desirous of maintaining print media haven’t learned to separate the fact from fiction with print media OR the internet.

Without indexed Universal Search (aka Google, Bing, etc…) no one would even know the newspapers sites are EVEN THERE.

The other problem newspapers have is they have NO IDEA what their readers want, and their editorial models are completely incongruent with the internet.

The reason no one wants to read newspapers anymore is because MOST of what is printed is IRRELEVANT from a real news standpoint.

This is an issue for so called Main Stream Media (MSM). The happenings that REALLY matter to the lives of Jane and John Doe don’t even make the main page or the leading story in the news cycle… because they may upset folks with political or financial clout.

I hope newspapers DO charge for content… then, in a very short time they’ll just go away, once they realize that the MAJORITY of their readers will NOT direct visit their sites.

Print Media is going away, because they violated the trust of their readership with pablum non-content garbage, and refused to act like a Forth Estate anymore.

Good riddance. So available content will disappear for awhile… BFD… The spirit of journalism hasn’t died and gone away. The willingness of readers to read BS and non-news about Britney and Paris, while “Rome” burns and regular folks are hurting… THAT’S what has gone away.

People who WANT to act in the spirit of REAL journalism, will spring forth and those of them that figure out how to create newsworthy content will rise up to the top.

There is a rapidly dwindling market for newspaper media. I don’t care what you do, say or believe… if you try to sell ANYTHING in business, that there is no market for, you will fail. It’s as simple as that.

Professional news-gathering organizations (forget whether or not they distribute via print or electrons) will rightfully cede the role of simple reporting, i.e., “We observed this happening today.” As many have pointed out, such requires immediacy not available in print. No, even the dimmest blogger can probably get that right, or at least enough of the 5000 who write about that factual event will get it right enough that we’ll pretty much get what happened.

We need the pros for the hard work of digging up well-hidden corruption and waste, artfully prying admissions out of people who do so against their interests.

You’re right in expecting that people expect stuff for free, but thats because the expectation was never set for you to pay (well maybe the newspapers should take tips from the porn industry). When the expectation does come down for paying for content, you’re either in or your out reading LOLcats all day.

I admit that we may have just a bit too many newspapers for every podunk town out there, but they do serve a purpose. Most likely they need to be transformed into web-based versions and have mobile interfaces as well.

Yes, reading about a child’s pony ride at the fair is not amazing, but the collecting and dissemination of knowledge however mundane needs to continue. Nationally, we probably need less people, but locally we should maintain.

@Phil Owens: Investigative journalism is not something that can be done in a couple of hours by Joe Sixpack.,A decent investigative story, including fact-checking, developing background and getting info from several sources, can take a week or more of full-time work. Most people would be unable to do a basic 300 word story in a lunch hour without copying out a press release.

@Jospeh Engo: True, people won;t pay for crap they can find free elsewhere, That’s why I think we’ll see more of a focus on local news. The paper I work for has a strong focus on news within our region, and as a result our paid circulation is actually rising – against the national trend.

Finally, newspapers are going through a tough time, and they will be forced to change; but there will always be a market for news from a credible source with the resources and access to newsmakers that 99.9% of bloggers will never have,

I don’t know what the solution is to keep newspapers alive but I suspect it will require a complete overhaul of their business model from the ground up. Printed news is a dying business. Buying a paper to read on Kindle is a joke. NOBODY will buy them (not the kindle, but the news).

Maybe it’s just time for the newspaper industry to die a natural death. They long ago stopped reporting the news and got into the business of manipulating public opinion one way or the other. Spoon feeding subscribers selective “facts” and leaving others out.

I think what people really want is accurate journalism without all the spin, and to be able to read it for free in digital format.