“Journalism” professionals STILL can not Identify their competition.

If you have an automotive engineer who writes an insightful three page description of an engine his team is developing every three years, that used to not be a problem. Even though it was just as well written as someone with a journalism or English degree might write.

It was one article every three years that only the man's friends were likely to see. If they shared it, well a few xerox copies mailed around still don't reach that many people even if it pyramids out seven times and by the time the last group gets it it will be a month later if they were being mailed.

Fast foreword to now.

There are thousands of engineers. Every 1095 of them writing once every three years equal one story a day. Written, generally, for free. As in costs no money. As in they are writing for their own vanity.

And on the web, writing in interest forums, or having those forums available as a place their friends might send the article – it will be seen.

Extend this out to other interests, because it carries over across the board.

Journalists keep looking at the picture trying to figure out how content producers are going to be paid in the new media.

The stopper is that they have to compete with people who write about any given subject as well or better than they possibly can WHO DON'T EXPECT TO BE PAID.

When the internet arrived and provided a means for people to disseminate their writings, this became inevitable. I saw it, Drudge saw it, hundreds and hundreds of people saw and have been discussing it for over a decade.

The dinosaur media is late to the party.

The fact remains that the vast majority of practitioners of new media rely heavily on print journalism for their content. Most of this new media, with some exceptions, does little more than link to and comment on the news as found in, that’s right, print media.

So your stage coach analogy doesn’t fit today’s reality. Automobiles succeeded the horse and buggy because they were faster, more practical and simply better. New media is none of these things to print. In fact, new media (and to a great extent broadcast journalism) largely would not exist were it not for print journalists doing the hard work of reporting and writing stories for bloggers to ruminate over.

Almost all serious reporting comes from print. Reporters in other media pick up the paper and re-report the stories on the front page. Print is the only media with reporters who have the skills, and the economic incentives and resources to investigate government. Print as a medium may be doomed, but as far as print reporters — these “stage coach drivers” are the only ones who know how to drive cars.

You're right that print distribution is ancient, but the news-gathering operations that those newspapers support is still vital. it's important to be able to pay people to do the kind of in-depth reporting that keeps government and corporations in check. Journalism isn't perfect, but what we have now is better than nothing.

Some of us are trying to find ways to sustain the industry. It's tough, though. And we need your support.

They are no longer the best means of distributing news and I suspect that news paper employees are feeling much the way stage coach drivers must have after the invention of the automobile.