Despite the mystique of the news business, most of the work of daily newspapers is the simple business of meat-and-potatoes journalism - going to meetings, monitoring government, writing stories about people in our community and, on a good day, exposing something that has gone amiss. And all of this needs to be written in a clear, understandable style. On a day-to-day basis it's a fairly simple product.
Readers crave information. We are up to our eyes in uniformed opinion and analysis.
Nationally over the past 50-60 years daily newspaper owners have made fairly hefty profits and have, on the side, been able to fund newsrooms full of professional journalists who are adept at reporting, editing, weighing information and writing quickly and clearly. The downside is that newspaper owners, until the last couple of years, haven't seen the need to adapt their business model to problems that starting emerging as long as 20 years ago. They have let the simple small well display advertisement slip away with out a fight.
It's the business model that has failed, not the journalism model. I don't see how scattered, part-time bloggers on politically loaded websites are going to fill the same information need as newspaper reporters.
As our Seattle daily newspapers devolve, it will be sad to see the loss of simple reporters who work their beats, attend meetings and work the phones.
Democracy will still be healthy. It just will be dumber.