The great and continuing failure of critics of the current state of newspaper journalism---thinking primarily of Jay Rosen, but there are plenty of others---is that they never convincingly indicate how, in the brave new world of citizen journalism and blogs and etc, the little guys and their little doings are going to be covered. All well and good to suggest that the dedicated citizen, or perhaps the journalist with subscribers, will pay close attention to the doings of the great and mighty. Washington, New York, Spears, Brangelina---sure, lots and lots of stuff about them. Or at least about their most public and basic doings. But how many dedicated amateurs are going to write, day after day, about the Sheboygan City Council or the Springfield Board of Fire Commissioners or ...you get the point.
You need infrastructure, you need continuing contact with sources and activities. Citizens get tired and bored. They can be intimidated or coopted. They have apparent biases. Not that journalists can't, but there is a structure in place to work against that.
The most promising suggestion I've seen so far is Walter Isaacson in this week's Time. Newspapers, he says, should stop giving their stuff away for free. The technology exists to do it. Didn't work well when the Times tried it with a few columnists. But I'll bet it would have been a different story if the entire Times had been subscription-only on the web.
