Yesterday's papers

Is Rupert Murdoch right to predict the end of newspapers as we now know them?

Mr. Murdoch told the American Society of Newspaper Editors that the press is too complacent in the face of potential challenges from new technology. The Economist cites examples,

... such as blogs. Short for "web logs", these are online journal entries of thoughts and web links that anybody can post.

Anybody can post, but is anybody reading?

The most popular bloggers now get as much traffic individually as the opinion pages of most newspapers.

Yes, but what credentials do they bring compared to those journalists we used to see on Lou Grant?

Matthew Hindman, a political scientist at Arizona State University, found that the top bloggers are more likely than top newspaper columnists to have gone to a top university, and far more likely to have an advanced degree, such as a doctorate.

Not only top bloggers, but even some bottom bloggers have advanced degrees. At least if you consider a law degree "advanced."

Another dangerous cliche is to consider bloggers intrinsically parasitic on (and thus, ultimately, no threat to) the traditional news business. True, many thrive on debunking, contradicting or analysing stories that originate in the old media. In this sense, the blogosphere is, so far, mostly an expanded op-ed medium. But there is nothing to suggest that bloggers cannot also do original reporting.

And there is the potential for bloggers to report more comprehensively than a newspaper can. For example, one could make it a point to follow the activities of a particular public body, a school board, say, and blog it. Newspapers cannot have reporters at every meeting of every school board, but an interested blogger or two in each school district could.