Reply #2: It's not a plot; it's blogs like this one [View All]

Why pay for something you can get for free?

The number of people who read a newspaper has diminished steadily. Does this mean they are not reading the news? Nope. They just get it online.

The problem has many facets, but the primary one is that people are creating news stories for free, newspapers are centered around a resource-eating device known as a printing press, and there is not enough of a market online to support a qualified staff of professional writers.

I suspect local news will be the last bastion of traditional paper printed news, but then stories will come from networked independent journalists in the form of a blog or news aggregation. I so badly want to leave my current position and pursue an independent blog for local news. But I am afraid I won't make enough money to keep a roof over our heads.

- Managing editor of a small weekly.