News gone away

Speaking of a loss of coverage of real news as the Internet keeps crowding print ... a guy who sends me stuff sends me this from an AP story:

As people turn increasingly to the Internet for their news, there is concern whether they are learning enough about what goes on in their communities.

There's a think-tank commission looking into it all -- not that there's much to be done about it -- and you can read all about it here.
There's this bogus 'citizen journalism' thing afoot in the land, an idea that people out there will just gather and disseminate the news as it happens. Publishers love it because it costs little or nothing, but a writing staff that works for beer money or the ego satisfaction of a byline or from ideological impetus is not one I want to rely on for my info about what happened at the city council meeting. Writers are notoriously considered as an annoying expense at most publications. Y'all are gonna miss reporters when they're all gone and the paper is nothing but itty-bitty pie charts and reader-submitted pix of the pup or the grandkids. I read somewhere that three out of five stories in the British press are from press releases. Do you want the subjects of stories being the ones to tell you what the story is?