That fails to explain why the newspaper business has been declining since before the web was a factor. It's been in decline for a very long time.
I've connected (like many around here) to many alternative news sources, and the fact is that newspapers have become superficial, fad-driven, fail to report on anything if it's "hard" (witness the lack of staffing of foreign offices), and incredibly beholden to narrative, which you can already see in Obama's coverage. (I don't know if the media is liberal-biased but it sure as hell is Obama-biased. The clearest example of this has been the treasury secretary nomination, which would have caused screams of outrage if Bush did it but a collective and fully conscious "meh" from an Obama nomination.)
There's a blogger ( http://michaeltotten.com/ ) who takes user donations and embeds himself with militaries in Iraq and more recently, Israel. He does better reporting than any newspaper or professional media organization, because they have zero such reporters. Zero. I always find it interesting when people criticize his reporting, because he is there and he is the only one there; nobody has any standing to criticize him. (I'd actually feel much better if there was.)
This has not always been true. Look at the beginning of Dan Rather's career. He wasn't the only one, either. Nobody does that anymore. Nobody from a newspaper, anyhow.
There are just so many stories they pass on because they don't want to report them (scandals in the wrong direction, mostly), or fundamentally can't understand them anymore (science reporting, I'm almost glad CNN dropped out because they were awful anyhow). Punditry has largely replaced facts (24-hour coverage may get eyeballs but it's a fundamentally bad, distorting idea). The media, as a whole, is simply awful. They are propaganda machines, and I'm not even just talking politics. Every time they write an article based on a press release (which is all the damn time), they're just propagandizing, not reporting.
It is possible that it is no longer possible for such entities to sustain such reporting, in which case the Totten model is probably the only hope for actual reporting going forward.
I've connected (like many around here) to many alternative news sources, and the fact is that newspapers have become superficial, fad-driven, fail to report on anything if it's "hard" (witness the lack of staffing of foreign offices), and incredibly beholden to narrative, which you can already see in Obama's coverage. (I don't know if the media is liberal-biased but it sure as hell is Obama-biased. The clearest example of this has been the treasury secretary nomination, which would have caused screams of outrage if Bush did it but a collective and fully conscious "meh" from an Obama nomination.)
There's a blogger ( http://michaeltotten.com/ ) who takes user donations and embeds himself with militaries in Iraq and more recently, Israel. He does better reporting than any newspaper or professional media organization, because they have zero such reporters. Zero. I always find it interesting when people criticize his reporting, because he is there and he is the only one there; nobody has any standing to criticize him. (I'd actually feel much better if there was.)
This has not always been true. Look at the beginning of Dan Rather's career. He wasn't the only one, either. Nobody does that anymore. Nobody from a newspaper, anyhow.
There are just so many stories they pass on because they don't want to report them (scandals in the wrong direction, mostly), or fundamentally can't understand them anymore (science reporting, I'm almost glad CNN dropped out because they were awful anyhow). Punditry has largely replaced facts (24-hour coverage may get eyeballs but it's a fundamentally bad, distorting idea). The media, as a whole, is simply awful. They are propaganda machines, and I'm not even just talking politics. Every time they write an article based on a press release (which is all the damn time), they're just propagandizing, not reporting.
It is possible that it is no longer possible for such entities to sustain such reporting, in which case the Totten model is probably the only hope for actual reporting going forward.