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I think your points about crediting and linking and the static nature of printed words pretty much sum up the problem newspapers are facing. However, I don't agree that the medium (newsprint) is what people really fear losing and what many of us are fighting to save. The problem with bloggers replacing newspapers is that quite simply, bloggers don't have the resources to do the reporting that informs and stands behind the stories everyone is crediting and linking to.
I admit that much of what came in the daily paper really doesn't require a true journalist...we can find out that the local bridge is under maintenance directly from the road department schedule on the Internet. Same with obituaries, and lots of other facts and events. But, if the bridge repair is being done by a company that falsified data and bribed local officials, well, that takes an awful lot of time and effort to find out (unless they are super stupid crooks). Possibly, the graft might be partially discovered by bloggers, but how many have the resources of a newsroom to verify, recheck, and stick with the story AND have the discipline not to throw out allegations before the case is fully developed? Newspapers have the economic model to be able to keep people on staff who can do this, have been trained to do it, and have checks and balances on when a story is "done". Sure there are bad papers, bad reporters, etc., but there have always been more good ones.
The point is unchanged, how do we pay for the hours and hours of hard, creative, and often thankless reporting? Some of the beats are soul-numbingly boring, but reporters go, week after week for years and years because that is the only way sometimes to get "inside" and be able to gain access to the bribery scandal, etc. Bloggers don't have a viable model to replace that yet. They may someday, but I for one don't trust corporations and government to feed honest press releases to the bloggers until they can develop that model, and I sure don't want to see our reporting infrastructure crumble and more than it already has.
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