I don't think it's good journalism that cost money but the infrastructure to maintain so many journalists being situated around the world. The question is if this is really necessary. My guess is more and more, no it isn't

Obviously you don't really need a journalist for every newspaper being situated in different parts of the world. I understand why they do it, but the problem is that they are often forced to compete with local citizens with cellphones, twitter, citizen journalism etc.

Most people don't really read news for the good journalism, they read it for the value of reading news.

How well this news is being written is in my mind secondary from that point of view.

But obviously it's not so simple. I just don't buy the argument about good journalism.

I agree that twitter and citizen journalism have shown themselves to be quite capable of disseminating information and news.

It's still not quite the same as reading a well written, unbiased, in-depth analysis of a story in The Economist or The New York Times (or even Al Jazeera).

Sure, there's a large market for "news-tainment". But I think there's also a market for high quality journalism.

I'm also tipping that people are more likely to pay (and pay more) for the latter too.

I too love well written articles. But it is unlikely a big enough market to entertain that many newspapers.

I do however have quibbles with the idea of unbiased journalism.

Personally I prefer highly opinionated pieces, but that's another discussion :)

I think you would be surprised. :-)

You're right about unbiased news though. It's a myth.

You really need to make up your own mind and read various sources to get some balance. I'm pretty sure all news has some inherent bias.

Opinion is fine, but don't try to make out like it's real news. Techcrunch is a major offender here.

This is a distressingly common sentiment these days. I can't think of any good reason to prefer opinionated screeds to well-balanced factual analysis. Very often it boils down to "I don't have confidence in news stories to have a 100% optimal distribution and analysis of the facts, so I've decided it's not even worth pursuing the truth."

Opinionated does not mean that it's not balanced or factual.

Everything is at the end of the day interpretation. I would rather know what peoples stance are whether I agree or disagree than to read something that is stated as the truth.

Something opinionated is by definition not balanced (in the sense of giving everything an equal shake) or factual. "Fact" and "opinion" are antonyms. And I can't imagine what it would look like for an article to be opinionated but not explicitly favor any particular view over another.

Are we using different definitions here or do you genuinely believe somebody arguing that Steve Jobs is a worthless sonovabitch is being evenhanded?

We are perhaps using different definitions.

"I think in order for newspapers to survive, people have to learn that they need to pay."

The Wall Street Journal and the Economist successfully taught their readers this lesson.

How many news organizations have good journalists though? I can count the ones I like on my fingers and some of them are mostly just bloggers as well. The market can support a few organizations doing international stuff, most of the rest just need reprint permissions.

The field is moving to much more federated-ness very quickly. People will not pay. Newspapers will not survive. Sorry.