Glenn Reynolds argues that:
The news business is in trouble. Readership and viewership are declining, public trust is plummeting, and advertisers are beginning to wonder whether they’re getting their money’s worth. This has led people to think about what blogger and tech journalist Doc Searls calls business models for “news without newspapers,” an approach to reporting and disseminating news that doesn’t depend on layers of editors for publication, and big ads from carmakers for funding. Nobody’s sure just how to do that yet.
That’s likely to change, though. Already we’re seeing a lot of reporting from nonjournalists, in which the “reporter” is just whoever happens to be on the scene, and online, when news happens. Given the ubiquity of digital cameras, cell phones, and wireless Internet access, that’s likely to become more common, making the kind of distributed newsgathering seen during the Indian Ocean tsunami the norm, not the exception.
He’s onto something alright, and Dan Gillmor has been ranting on about it for years.