I realize this is slightly off the subject, as I’m supposed to be commenting on the idea of seeking philanthropic help for papers’ news-gathering efforts, but I should hope my view about that is clear enough: don’t bother. If you’re failing it’s because you’re failing your readers and they don’t want your product. It’s Mr. Smith’s “invisible hand” at work. Now that alternatives exist, your formerly captive readers are abandoning you for them, weeding you out of the marketplace like last week’s Pravda. Seeking to prop yourselves up via charity is simply a transparent (and frankly, risible) attempt to hold onto your ability to influence and mold the public, your primary aim not having been to serve them.

But media’s call nowadays to protect the fourth estate seems oddly disingenuous, when corporate media giants have treated governmental power as more of a threat to multinationals (like themselves) than to individuals, and treated readers more like consumers than citizens in need of information to govern themselves.

But we’re clearly in the midst of a (virtual) revolution.

Likely, the self-organizing features of the internet (and its social-networking tools) will result in new patterns of revenue flows (as well as information flows)