The Internet is always available to the readers with millions of messages produced. It is the job of a reporter to seek out the truth, to report the truth, and to kill the rumors.

Newspapers are a statement made by the region that they are from. However, as Vesely reports, distance no longer matters. People from all over the world can view a newspapers website.

“The big are getting bigger and the smallest will survive,” writes Veseley. On one hand, there are the successful big six: Time Warner, News Corp., New York Times holdings, Hearst, Disney and Tribune. However there are also successful models for smaller papers.

Vesely reports, “One model is possibly the privately held, independent newspaper, which is based on a locale instead of a monopolistic chain. Another model is the smallest niche of newspapers, and the hardest for bloggers to replace. Each can serve, and derive profit from, being the smallest and smartest songbird in the forest.”

Vesely says that newspapers need to find a way to successfully transform into the new digital age and that profits will return, but he is not sure how or when. For example, he sees Craigslist as a negative-editorial product because it takes profits that are normally given to a newsroom.

Vesely concludes with some words by Hal Crowther, columnist, The Independent Weekly (North Carolina):
"While the newspaper is expendable, the tradition it represents and the information it supplies are not. The evolution from Gutenberg to Gates may be irreversible, but as new media replace the old ones there's no official passing of the torch of responsibility, no automatic transfer of the sacred trust the First Amendment placed upon the free press and its proprietors. In fact, the handoff, such as it is, has been fumbled very badly. As newspapers are eviscerated, marginalized and abandoned, they leave a vacuum that nothing and no one is prepared to fill — a crisis on its way to becoming a tragedy. When railroads and riverboats began to go the way of the passenger pigeon, no one was harmed except the work force and a few big investors who had failed to diversify. If professional journalism vanishes along with the newspapers, this thing we call a constitutional democracy becomes a banana republic."

Source: The Seattle Times through Poynter Institute Romenesko