[runarberg]

I don't think so. If you look at theatre for comparison (which is also an act of storytelling), most plays are simple amateur pieces, that anybody with some skills and knowledge can put together. However there are also very expensive professional theaters that that sometimes tell the same stories as the amateurs for many thousands times the cost of the amateur pies. Yet expensive theatre is found in every major city.

To keep the analogy, NY-times is doing web-page stories Broadway-style. Perhaps they found an unexplored marked, perhaps it is too soon. But sooner or later, the art-form of story telling on the web is going to be taken to the next level done by professionals for a lot more money than any amateurs telling the same story.

[tormeh]

You forget that sometimes we go to events and places not because of the places or events themselves, but for their image or the people we expect will also attend. The same doesn't work for the web.