As news consumers gather more content online, and legacy publishers find themselves with less revenue, 21st century readers and viewers will suffer a great loss. That loss is not, however, the old tactile feel of paper and ink in the hands; it is a dearth of reliability, objectivity, and accountability of new reporting. This is serious. Are journalists and publishers willing to rise to the challenge?
As more reporters find themselves underemployed, and probably in search of meaningful assignments, they must answer the call to fill this enlarging void, even if it means personal sacrifice or pay cut for a season.
Out here in cyberspace, we readers need news we can believe and trust. The legacy publishers who can find innovative ways to put serious journalists back to work are the publishers and editors who will catch the next wave of journalistic relevance, and hopefully some measure prosperity along the way.
Blogs are entertaining, but in the big picture we need to know what is really happening in this world. You publishers figure it out; we're not waiting to see what you come up with, because we're ahead of you. Ultimately though, we need the true journalists of the world to get out there in front of us so that the nation and the world are not led astray by manipulation, "press releases", fluff and "reality" TV. Can you handle it?

I'm getting tired of these handwringing analyses that try to pin blame for newspapers' struggles on newspapers themselves.

Look, there was no further "understanding of the medium" that would have helped the Rocky Mountain News. There was no forward-thinking mindset, no willingness to ditch old habits, that would have helped.

The bottom line is very simple: Advertising doesn't generate revenue on the web the way it does in print. Period. Journalism is not economically feasible online, at least not the kind that employs legions of full-time professionals to comprehensively cover current events.

This insistence on thinking there must be some concrete internal reason for newspapers' struggles -- bad management, balance-sheet demands, etc. -- is dreamy and quixotic.

The only "new thinking" that is needed for newspapers is for some brilliant savant to come along and figure out how to make human beings respond to online advertising. As it stands, they don't, and unless that savant comes along, the Rocky Mountain News is going to ultimately rest in a very crowded graveyard.

You want to know what went wrong? I can tell you in one word: bias.

When you start off with the assumption that half of your readers (or more) are racist and/or ignorant, then you have automatically eliminated half of your potential readership.

It would be one thing if it were restricted to the editorial pages, but it's evident in every article that purports to be "objective." Whether it's in refusing to identify the political party of Democrats in stories covering their misdeeds or refusing outright to cover stories at all (e.g., the recent ACORN incident, Van Jones, etc.), pretty much every newspaper just drips with liberal ideology that pretends to be "news."

It has nothing to do with online revenue: plenty of companies are making a fortune operating for-profit ventures. They aren't performing magic tricks, they're providing goods and services that people actually WANT.

I love the constant excuse-making by ideologues who claim that everything under the sun EXCEPT the obvious is the cause for their failure. Unless and until newsrooms stop insulting half their readership and stop withholding newsworthy information from the other half, they are all destined to die...slowly and painfully.

I will not mourn them because they have been a pox on society for decades. Newsrooms are not supposed to be social experiments, but that's what so-called "journalists" seem to think they SHOULD be.

That's why they're constantly being "scooped" by lone bloggers and 20-year old kids with video cameras: newsrooms stopped being about "just the facts, ma'am" a long time ago.

RIP

I'm a conservative, and you're wrong.

There is bias in much of the news media's political coverage, yes. But it is not the reason that news-content producers are struggling online, any more than "bias" is the reason for the music industry's struggles.

Bias did not seep into political coverage yesterday. It has been there for years. Indeed, you yourself call it "a pox on society for decades." Yet these newspapers did not die decades ago, the way they're dying now. "Half the potential readership" was not "automatically eliminated" years ago, the way you claim it is now.

In other words, if this particular market pressure existed to the extent you think it does, it would have had its effects a long time ago.

Furthermore, and perhaps most damning to your argument: The Rocky Mountain News, the very newspaper under discussion here, was a conservative paper.

Your argument is disjointed. On one hand you point out that the phenomenon of bias is not new. On the other you dismiss the one phenomenon that IS new: "online revenue."

Your argument about bias seems to hinge on the idea that it has drained newspapers' readership. Yet newspapers' readership is actually higher than ever. Most newspapers have far higher readership on the web than they ever had in print.

The problem is not readership numbers, which remain high. The problem, as I have already explained, is the meager revenue generated by online advertising.

You are correct that there is liberal bias to be found in the news media. You are wrong that it the reason for the media's financial woes.