I am guilty of not supporting newspapers, and get satellite TV with "regional" news coverage. Will news go the way of WIKIPEDIA and simply be a report of an opinion that cannot be substantiated and no one can be held accountable? Face it, most of what is found on the innerwebs is simply repackaging of some "legit" news source. How is a reporter going to get paid to report? He sure isn't going to be able to do it for free.
Do you honestly think the traditional news sources are "accountable"? They report what makes them money, with sufficient spin and sensationalism to bring in viewers, because reporting the news isn't really their business: getting people to listen to what they're saying is their business.
Simple fact is in today's time, information travels very fast and efficiently outside of the traditional outlets. If 9/11 happened today I'd wager I'd know within a minute or two - maybe less. Not via "BREAKING NEWS" on my TV from some official outlet, but instead through either Twitter or Facebook.
Traditional news outlets were created essentially to overcome a technical limitation that no longer exists. In the days of yore, people couldn't easily communicate with lots of people over long distances. It became more efficient to streamline those communications into an "official" source that could be mass distributed over a distance. Computers have solved that problem. Information can be spread between individuals rapidly without need for the traditional sources. People talk about what's important to them. For hobbyist stuff, we have bloggers. Or podcasters. I subscribe to around 3 dozen different podcasts that I listen to that have weekly or bi-weekly shows and are of a MUCH higher quality and interest level to me than anything the commercial market is putting out - and most of them are done simply by people volunteering their time, because they're doing them on a subject they care about. Heck a forum like this largely replaces what in a news paper was once essentially the "Letters to the Editor" section. Why try to communicate with the world through a middle-man when we can all come together and talk freely?
Newspapers are a dying breed. They are going out of business at a record pace. In a few more decades, all but the most entrenched ones will be gone, and even those will likely only have the physical paper as a side-line to their electronically hosted content.
I feel about as much remorse for them as I do for buggy-whip manufacturers in the face of the automobile. The fact that their business model is no longer valid isn't my concern. The world moved forward - they need to as well. If they can't survive as a niche company, then transition into a different business sector.
Do a Google search for "new media" and you'll see a lot of discussion on this very topic. "Old media" like newspapers, books, magazines, broadcast TV, etc is VERY quickly being replaced by "new media" which typically consists of websites, blogs, podcasts, webisodes and social media sites.
