Jackie, it's not that I'm not with you because I am. But working as an editor and all, I have this question... When it all happens without advertising, where does the money come from? Is the same question as with print: When the newspapers shut down, what are all these blogs going to use for link sources? Don't they need someone to put shoe leather on the streets?

You're just asking the wrong questions, Crid. As Matt Welch told me about what the LA Times needs to do: "We need to be a reporting, news-delivering website that happens to put out a newspaper, too." I never said anything about shutting newspapers down. (But, you know, there are lots of bloggers breaking stories, doing damn fine reporting, and doing it without a print edition or television channel. For example, Michael Totten, Michael Arrington, Danny Sullivan...I could go on.)

As for where the money's going to come from, it would be wrong to paraphrase this, so just check it out: http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/kelly08/kelly08_index.html

Where the money is not going to come from: commodities and engineering false scarcity.

NB I'd add that the reduction in costs of producing truly good reporting, journalism and media are plummeting with every passing day. Look at what the amateurs can do on a shoestring. If your newspaper or network or other old media operation is costing you what it always has, you're not running your business very well.

> I never said anything about
> shutting newspapers down.

Nobody had to... They're all losing money and will shut themselves down. The TV networks are right behind 'em.

Kelly's begging the question: utilitarians do that a lot. In "The Brethren," Bob Woodward discusses the fighting within the Supreme Court chambers regarding school integration. Many districts were stalling, in the South especially. Some had good practical and financial reasons while others were being blatantly racist. By 1970, one senior justice --I forget who-- had lost patience. After yet another plaintiff made his case for integration (or for delaying it), the pissed-off Justice (I think it was Harlan) announced to the conference that he would dissent from any decision that didn't demand that schools desegregate "Now!"

Others on the court knew that wouldn't it work... School systems would return to the bench to ask what "now" means. Tuesday at 10:30am? This semester? The fall term? Five years? "When?"

Kelly says consumers will turn to content providers who are trustworthy, reliable, worth paying for, etc. And I'm all like... Right, but who's that? I'm a tech in Hollywood. If the networks can't sell ads to produce the shows they pay me to edit, who will?

The question is metaphorical in the sense that I'm confident of not starving anyway. But it's literal in that the matter of where the money will actually change hands hasn't been addressed yet.

With regard to newspapers, I don't think bloggers can be trusted to do all the final-word, legally-defensible publishing required for a community. Much of what newspapers do is sexless and infrastructural, like going to school board meetings and combing police blotters. You need shoe leather for that.

Kelly cops to this in his last sentences: "There is still a lot to learn. A lot to figure out. Write to me if you do."