I've been thinking a lot lately about the future of newspapers. It's not just that I can't imagine how we'll potty train puppies or wrap fish in a world without them; I have a hard time understanding how the news will work without them.
The problem is that the interwebs are full of opinions. Mine included. And there's no shortage of niche material on a wide variety of subjects. Certainly we can all learn to get along without the local rag printing movie reviews and stock quotes. But I have a hard time understanding who will cover local and state government. The wire services and nationals that survive the transition to the web will still cover federal government. But how will you know when the City is about to rezone that property next to you? Who will dig through the state budget when our legislators tell fibs about funding?
The truth is, and real journalists will let you know at great length about how this works, TV and Radio have always relied on newspapers to do the real reporting. Listen to your local news broadcast and note how many times they say "in today's such and such Gazette-Herald." Blogs are just the latest to get their start from ripping content from mainstream media.
