WSJ on the future of newspapers

The Wall Street Journal offers an excellent piece, occasioned by the sale of Knight-Ridder, that offers an optimistic view of the future of the newspaper business.

Gathering news, reporting stories and making editorial decisions about what is important and of interest to readers -- these are the core competencies of newspapers. And the Internet hasn't changed those jobs at their fundamental level. Both the skills required to do them well and the newspaper brands with reputations for integrity remain valuable in the information marketplace. The news aggregators, such as Google News, are just that -- collectors of other companies' news products. Without news outlets to generate the material that Google searches and collates, there is no Google News.

This is the core of their argument, and it's a good one. But it basically amounts to an argument for some organization to collect and edit news. It is not an argument in favor of spraying ink on paper and throwing the result on my driveway. I remain unconvinced that newspapers, in their present form, have much of a future.