Death of Journalism

Excellent article by Ian Shapira from the Washington Post on how aggregators are killing journalism. I'm sympathetic to the problem. The author really brings it home when he is talking about all the legwork it took to get a story and then Gawker says it took about 30 minutes to cut and paste the parts it liked.

I wish I could see a way out of this but I can't. Newspapers are partially to blame for this because they didn't invest online enough, but they also had brands that might not translate. What newspaper man outside of Rupert Murdoch would embrace the Gawker concept on a white board? Not many.

I'm all ears if people have ideas on solving the problem. One is for the Post to buy sites like Gawker, which seems the most natural. However, they may have waited too long, as their cash reserves are beginning to dwindle, witness the NY Times' sale-leaseback of their headquarters, and they're stock prices have been crushed so stock is not a good acquisition currency. They may be too far gone.

Would love to hear people's thoughts.