Chicago Reader | What's Black and White and Dead All Over?: Notes on journalism’s past, present, and future prompted by the Chicago Journalism Town Hall | By Whet Moser

Chicago Reader | What's Black and White and Dead All Over?: Notes on journalism’s past, present, and future prompted by the Chicago Journalism Town Hall | By Whet Moser

Fascinating look at the problem with newspapers and the Web. He does do some heavy lifting (and a lot of name dropping) explaining what the Web is doing to the old newspaper institutions. He doesn't mention TV or radio too much, but they don't do too much original journalism either.

The business case for journalism is how do you get paid? It used to be ads. What's the new model? If "journalism" dies, then what? What does the market want? Will we end up with websites hiring freelancers to report the news? What about editorial standards? It'll be interesting to see what shakes out. Although I have a feeling that newspapers will be around in one form or another for a long time.