Admitting the inevitable

 A recent survey of newspaper editors found that most think newspapers will be free in the future. It seems logical considering that most breaking news is already free, and many people catch their headlines online, which is essentially free - except the initial investment of resources to access the Internet.

While newspapers in the print edition still come at a nominal cost, many people that I've talked to say, "Why would I pay for the paper when I can read it online for free?" And those papers that aren't producing interesting online content, or have Web sites that appear amateur, are certainly not earning themselves readers using online content. And think of how far a story online can travel and compare that to how much exposure it gets in a newspaper with 20,000 circulation.

While many online news consumers want their news as quickly as possible, that does not excuse journalists from fulfilling their primary function of being watchdogs for the public. It is discouraging to see that many editors responded they thought the quality of journalism will decline due to the emphasis on speed. Certainly both aspects of journalism can work together in this changing news environment. I believe that advances in information dissemination will lead to greater news-gathering abilities in less time. This is the perfect union of speed and investigation.

See Yahoo! news story here.