[doug_m]

"hey’ll quickly understand the value of their content, which, with rare exceptions like the Wall Street Journal, is something very much like zero"

This is very much untrue, at least in the UK. The quality dailies have had a very strong year and have driven forward the debate on all kinds of things:- parliamentary expenses, the Brown/McBridge spin sleaze, the Iraq inquiry, the News of the World tapping scandal.

Whether we'd have seen anything like this kind of investigation from the BBC's news organisation or online is no sure thing. Possibly in a TV show like Panorama but then you're talking about 50 such shows a year.

Sometimes I feel like a minority of one but when the papers start charging I imagine I'll think its a good use of my income and I'll pick one.

[jerf]

I think the current value of your average newspaper column-inch is close to zero. (Note the difference between "close to zero" and "zero"... but probably not enough of a difference to matter much.)

What I think is the case is that when some papers face the task of generating value, a lot of them will fold, but some of them will find it in themselves to produce good content. Being more directly exposed to the market will almost certainly cull the herd, but I for one would trade the quantity we have now for quality any day.

The fact that we're even talking about this rather proves the point that most of them have nothing of value to offer (recalling that "the media" isn't actually one monolithic entity). If the content were truly that valuable, they already would have locked it behind pay walls and people would be paying for it, as evidenced by the valuable content that has survived exactly that process. The problem here isn't the sanctity of newspapers or our society's undebatable need for them, it's that the market has suddenly heated up and they don't want to have to compete. Sorry, no such luck. It's time for them to stop talking and start doing, if that's what they're going to do.

[ricree]

Agreed. I can't really speak for any other area, but several of the large Chicago papers (most notably the Tribune) have been key in exposing and fighting government corruption.

While their average content isn't always that great, they are able to supply a level of investigation and fact checking that would be missed if they went out of business.

[hvs]

There's no question that newspapers often (sometimes?) do good reporting -- the Chicago Tribune is a great example of this. The real question is, are people willing to pay money for it and is it enough to maintain a business? I (and many others) would argue that the current structure of newspapers is not going to be profitable. When 90% of your content is filler from the AP or Reuters, why should people pay for it? The day of general purpose news organizations (with the exception of a few like AP and Reuters) is fast coming to an end.