Comment by InclinedPlane

I disagree. The problem with traditional media is that they define themselves as being exactly how they are today. And that doesn't leave a path for them to transform into what they could survive as tomorrow.

Big newspapers, for example, don't seem willing to succumb to the idea that regurgitating AP wire reports, the weather, national sports news, craigslist printouts, and Marmaduke strips need not be a part of their identity. All of those things are part of the glorious edifice of newspaperdom. And thus most newspapers will almost certainly hold on to that sense of identity until the bitter end, hoping that one of the many tiny little adjustments they keep making here and there will finally be their financial salvation.

Ultimately I think the vast majority of traditional media groups are just too wedded to their outdated identities to be able to shed their skin and become something utterly different.

Traditional media may still be doing a lot of the "grunt work" today in reporting, but that's already changing incredibly rapidly. And at the rate that independent reporters are sprouting up it may not be long until people stop peddling the line that blogs are just lazy consumers of the news that the traditional media creates (already that is not 100% true).

The thing that a lot of people don't realize is that a perfect replacement for the existent news media does not have to exist in order to "allow" traditional news media to fail. It is quite possible, and likely, that there will be a relative vacuum that will be filled in after the fact, not before.