In the welter of doomsday theories on the future of newspapers, and the hype over citizen journalism and user-generated content, Jason Pontin of MIT Technology Review flings a small arrow of hope:
“Editors still have a very important function and that role will only increase in importance. They will be like a bartender at your favorite bar. People will go to them expecting the best information and as long as that information remains quality, those readers will continue to return.”
On a hazier note, the British columnist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, who writes in The Independent, London, and has been at the receiving end of bloggers’ ire, says:
“Blogging is the equivalent of going to the pub and listening to complete bores sounding off.”
