False Bravado

The News & Observer's Dennis Rogers whistles past the graveyard in his column Saturday, trying to convince himself that the newspaper industry is healthy. To make himself feel better about his future employment prospects, perhaps, he lashes out at the new kids in town:

If this is the brave new world, all I've got to say is, "Pshaw!" While there are responsible, well-researched and literate blogs doing a fine job at "people's journalism," there are plenty that are little more than some computer geek sitting in his mother's basement in his shorts and screaming for attention. It is difficult to know whom to believe and whom to laughingly ignore.

Newspapers are embracing new technology and the results are marvelous. But e-gizmos won't replace a rumpled reporter on the trail of a story. And when the piece is written and sleazy politicians are worried what their future holds, the answer will still be on the front steps by dawn's early light.

No newspapers? They wish.

Newspapers will indeed survive, as they have the resources to conduct original reporting that bloggers, in general, lack. Reporting may survive the onslaught of the new media, but not necessarily opinion columns.

Newspapers will have to trim the fat somewhere, however, and columnists are a dime a dozen... or as Times Select is proving, perhaps overpriced at that rate.