A recent article about Patch outlines the 5 things it’s doing right.

Read through them and tell me if you think these 5 things are strengths for a journalism operation.  Are they game-changing strengths?

What do you think about AOL’s model for covering local news?  Is it sustainable?

It happened a LOT this week.

Sohaib Athar was tweeting about a battle raging in his typically quiet city.  The noise turned out to be U.S. soldiers attacking Osama Bin Laden’s hideout.

This gets us back to the question we keep returning to this semester…what is journalism?  Was Athar practicing journalism?  Can someone perform an act of journalism without even trying?  Does it not count because he didn’t know what he was tweeting about?

Should the media be giving this IT consultant the attention he’s receiving, or is it another case of the medium becoming the message?

It’s depressing.  Long and depressing.

Edmonds likes to offer some hope with these dismal reports.  Here’s the silver lining he offers:

Indeed, that’s good.  I suppose when we see companies giving up on digital, we’ll know things are really bad.

Read the report and tell me what you would do if you were leading one of these huge newspaper companies.  Would you borrow and invest?  Where would you put your investments?  Would you cut?  What would you cut?

He writes this week about the long tail, which is something you should be quite familiar with by now.

His argument is that the fatal flaw in the long tail theory is Internet piracy:

Rather than a long tail, Internet theft’s mass looting of the content industry is transforming the Internet into a fat-headed economy with everything on top—an increasingly unequal medium which discriminates against independent filmmakers and makes it harder, rather than easier, for them to make a living from today’s digital economy.

His article (read the whole thing) is focused on the challenges of the entertainment industry, but it’s worth noting because we spend a lot of time talking about the Internet believers.  Y

ou also need to hear from the Internet skeptics.

What are Keen’s solutions?  If you read his book, you might agree with me that this is where Keen’s uphill battle gets particularly steep.

I’ve been surprised at the number of Internet skeptics in this class.  I sometimes fall under the same assumption of so many that the younger generation is on board with our digital future and not ready to be critical of it.  I’m pleased to hear the healthy skepticism.

Keen gets a lot of criticism for his beliefs.  Some of it is fair and some isn’t.  Whether you agree with him or not, I think it’s important someone is asking tough questions.

After this class concludes, keep your healthy skepticism.  Blind belief of any vision of the future is likely to disappoint.

News.me is yet another attempt to reorganize news through the new social Internet.

Read up…what do you think?  Does this particular news product strike you as something unique?  Is there something you’d like to see developed for news through social media?  What about the subscription?  Would you pay for this app?

If you’ve explored comments on different stories, you’ll know it’s not difficult to know when comments are going to go in a “bad” direction.

But these calls are not always “slam dunks”.  There’s a lot of grey area.

Do you think you’d know when to take down a comment thread?  What would make you disable a thread?

Don’t know what it is?

Ok, perhaps we should be afraid.  Who would pay to have someone cultivate content on the web for you when you can get your friends to do a better job, and for no cost.

Social media does this already.   The iPad just makes it look pretty, which is what people want.

Should traditional media fear Flipboard?  What’s scary about it?  How could any of the nice people in the video mean us harm?

Imagine if Gutenberg had invented a digital modem rather than a printing press, and that for centuries all of our information had come to us online.

Further, imagine if we held a press conference announcing the invention of an intriguing new product called the “newspaper.”

That press conference might go something like this:

“We’re pleased to announce a new product that will revolutionize the way you access information. It will save you time and money and keep you better informed than ever before.

“Just consider the hours you’ve spent on the internet looking for information of interest to you. We’ve hired specialists who live and work in your hometown to cull information sources and provide a daily report tailored to your community, your friends and your neighbors.

“We also know that you sometimes wonder whether you can trust the information you see online. We plan to introduce a painstaking new process called “fact-checking” in which we actually verify the information before we pass it along to you.

“In addition to saving time online, you’ll also save money. You won’t need those expensive color ink cartridges or reams of paper because information will be printed out for you in full color every day.

“You’ll also save money on access charges and those unpleasant fights over who gets time on the computer because this product will be physically delivered to your home at the same time each day, for less than what you would tip the guy from Pizza Hut.

“You worry about your kids stumbling across porn on the internet, but this product is pre-screened and guaranteed suitable for the whole family.

“And in a security breakthrough, we guarantee newspapers to be absolutely virus-free, and promise the elimination of those annoying pop-up ads.

“It’s also the most portable product in the world, and doesn’t require batteries or electricity. And when the flight attendant tells you to turn off your electronic devices, you can actually turn this on, opening page after page without worrying about interfering with the plane’s radar.

“To top it all off, you don’t need a long-term warranty or service protection program. If you’re not happy with this product on any day, we’ll redesign it and bring you a new one the next day.”

I can see the headlines now: “Cutting-edge newspapers threaten Google’s survival.”

This, of course, is not the world that we live in, but Paulson’s point is that newspapers have value.

Can you make a pitch for the future of newspapers?  What would it look/sound like?

From my viewpoint, he’s spot on.  His concluding sentence sums up the situation perfectly:

So far, no one has really cracked the code for producing profitable local news online.

Sobering?  Yes.

Some are putting their hope in the digital natives.  This is the generation of journalists who’ve always lived in a digital world and understand it better than those with their foundations in traditional media.

This is a ripe opportunity for innovators.  Whatever the solution is, it will look nothing like the past.

Journalism schools are still attracting students.  Are these the digital natives who’ve come to save the day?

Are you hopeful about the future of journalism?  Pessimistic?  Why?