1. Ted Rall and his insistence that online news degenerates if it doesn't have a firm way to make readers pay for good journalism. He is usually talking about the coming failure of large news organizations, which he links to his own survival. Are journalists going to have to survive on their own in the future? Should we be keeping large news authority websites alive?

2. There are many good online vehicles for various uses, such as Escrow.com as a financial instrument for sales of items between strangers, Paypal, and — had the U.S. not decided to hammer it out of existence here — Neteller. Each one acquired a reputation without a preexisting brand. If the financial instruments are evolving online, news organizations should have to do the same. If the NYT or LATimes can't make their readers pay, or fail because their news is being lifted and used for free, then we have the opportunity to get brand new ones. I find that encouraging.

The internet is slowly working over the news and it's beating it to a pulp. The average internet user is an idiot who receives chain mail and internet legend stories and believes them. These bits of trash compete with and often win over facts, and particularly during election years contribute to “The Big Sort” because they tend to be polarizing. (I found your blog because it was posted on Slashdot.)

I disagree with Maurice Cardinal about errors. They can distract a reader from your overall excellence. But I definitely won't stop reading.

With blogs, I expect some typos here and there. Knowing it's just one person typing it out, I tend to forgive those much more. When they appear in “mainstream print”, with it's levels of review, I have a much harder time.

And than – “The King is Naked!” – it took a child to notice.

This is an intriguing premise but it is more in the realm of philosophy and and religion becoming the new journalism.

The idea that the daily newspaper, as a product either ethereal or tangible, could just disappear without any particular replacement having been summoned to relieve it, is a profoundly unsettling one, as you can see from reading some of the previous comments. The Shirky article really hammers down on the repercussions of that likely event.

I like your article because it brings into focus what journalism would be without newspapers. I think that there's an ideal, where a story can be broken by a cellphone photo being posted on a twitter feed. Folks are looking for follow-up, however, which has often been the niche of the journalist: to follow up on stories. As long as people are out there following up, I think that might be able to substitute for journalism.