Perhaps there’s hope after all. Dead tree news is dying rapidly, partly because the business model is broken, partly because the (mis)management of the big publishing houses seem hell-bent on doing what they can to further their own demise by defunding and de-emphasizing true journalism (you know, what we, the readers, are paying for) and focusing on punditry and vapid trivia coated with a veneer of current affairs (apparently what they think advertisers want running alongside their purchased space).
It is a little hard to get behind the notion that “real” news will somehow shift online in the guise of bloggers and large “virtual” publishing coops like firedoglake and huffpo. After all, those writers and editors need to eat too. All the same, it’s exciting to see vtblogger.org appear on the stage here in Vermont as a true investigative journalism site, committed to true ideals of old-fashioned news reporting, but in an exclusively online format. I for one wish them all the best, and will be checking and supporting the site on a regular basis.
