http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/13/technology/start-ups/13hyperlocal.html

And one more interesting online journalism experiment, just launched over the weekend: True/Slant, funded by Forbes Media and Velocity Interactive Group: http://trueslant.com/dvorkin/2009/04/08/welcome-to-trueslant/. Walt Mossberg review of True/Slant: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123922742849502695.html

What I’m trying to say is, let’s not be overly sentimental about this. We can all agree that the Globe’s passing would be a shame, and that a strong press is key to the functioning of a democracy. That agreement is beside the point. What the Globe needs to survive is either new revenues on the order of $100 million a year or more, or the equivalent in cost savings. It’s difficult to see where the earnings would come from—certainly not from print advertising or subscriptions. But it’s very easy to see where the savings would come from: by shutting down the presses, mothballing the delivery trucks, and scaling down the newsroom to the size of other respectable Web publications.

What I’m also trying to say is that you might be surprised how much of the stuff needed to replace the Globe is already here. Local Web publications like GlobalPost or Xconomy certainly do not have the manpower—”enough feet on the street,” as Dodge puts it—to take over for the Globe. But we’ve made a start, and (unlike the Globe, frankly) we’re hungry, energetic, and inventive.

I cannot accept the proposition that local democracy is so fragile that it depends on the survival of a single newspaper. Mulvoy asks who is going to call public officials and other fat cats to account in the absence the today’s costly newsrooms. Well, the Voice of San Diego is making a pretty good start—just this week the non-profit, online-only publication started publishing the results of a three-month investigation into a huge real-estate scam. And Manhattan-based ProPublica, with funding from the Sandler Foundation, is doing some great work covering the federal bailout and U.S. treatment of terrorism detainees. In other words, the online experiments we’re already seeing leave me optimistic that journalism will survive the death of newspapers. And who knows, the immense openness of the Web might even create new varieties of populist muckraking, or new pressures for government transparency, that we can’t imagine right now.

Another thing I haven’t seen addressed anywhere: where are people who don’t have easy access to the Internet (or even if they do, aren’t comfortable with it) going to get the content for which they currently rely on a daily paper Globe? Going cold-turkey to online, or even going to a weekly print model, will disenfranchise hundreds of thousands. There’s some real ageism lurking in there, too.

To me, that is the only substantial question that matters, and you pass over the issue in a single sentence without any expatiation. Sports and celebrity infotainment and columnist/blogger commentary about the state of our world and times that are offered as news are essentially fluff that anyone can drop onto an electronic page for what it’s worth to an individual consumer. Locally, things like priest abuse, civil rights outrages, health care initiatives, government and political scandal, lender horrors etc. and etc. are something else again and it costs money (for things like libel protection, FOIA applications, defense counsel against suits), lots of time in courthouses and registries and online seeking data and diligence to dig something up and present findings that stand the test of credibility and legality.
I have not read anywhere a decent notion of how, absent the costly organization of so-called watchdog journalism that is practiced in the now-dying form of energetic newspapers — and the advertising and consumer investment that is needed to support it, in print and online — presidents and the Congress and selectmen and every public official in between can regularly be called to account for their actions. Who’s to push them if individual livelihoods are at risk when the powerful strike back?
This isn’t a plug to keep newspapers alive just because the good ones are excellent watchdogs; it’s a sentiment that we need to come to grips with what you pass over in a single sentence as we escort newspapers to their final resting places. Their electronic descendants will need a theory of the case.

Why isn’t the Herald ever discussed as the surviving print alternative to the Globe? A somewhat serious question.

Rich