If you're a regular news reader, you probably have heard about the continuing decline of the traditional press, particularly newspapers:

For newspapers, the news has swiftly gone from bad to worse. This year is taking shape as their worst on record, with a double-digit drop in advertising revenue, raising serious questions about the survival of some papers and the solvency of their parent companies.

Ad revenue, the primary source of newspaper income, began sliding two years ago, and as hiring freezes turned to buyouts and then to layoffs, the decline has only accelerated.

The Florida press corps hasn't been spared this decline either:

...we're witnessing the steady depletion of a capital press corps that has long been regarded as one of the strongest in the country. That's bad for democracy.

Ravaged by readership and advertising losses and struggling to turn a profit from their online editions, U.S. newspapers are trimming their staffs. State capital bureaus are not immune.

As a consequence, fewer people are around to hold government accountable and make it relevant to taxpayers and voters.

I can't say I've ever really been a fan of the press. There are some really great reporters and columnists which still operate in the traditional press, but I lament the sheer lack of coverage of state and local politics that has existed even before this latest round of layoffs. The traditional press has been largely complicit, and indeed an enabler, in a lot of the failed politics and policies of the last quarter century. Their obsession with so-called "balance", no matter how factually wrong or inaccurate one side of a story is, has to get the same amount of ink as the other side. This foolishness has led to loads of stories and print space on global warming skeptics, despite the fact that overwhelming scientific consensus says otherwise. The traditional press has coddled and protected columnists which have also been proven factually wrong in their editorials over and over again, yet still maintain their same posts to continue to mislead the public. The result has been a weakened and less informed democracy, which has hurt everyone.

However, some coverage of politics, even crappy coverage, is always better than no coverage at all. I know some in the new media realm, particularly the blogosphere, are probably saying to themsleves "They're just getting what they deserve." That may be partially true, but a weakened press hurts all of us, and it's an issue everyone should pay attention to and care about.

So as the traditional press shrinks, what exactly is taking it's place? Many thought in the recent past that newspaper online editions would simply take the place of printed papers. That hasn't been the case, as online ad revenues are much smaller than traditional print ads.

Others are saying that blogs will take the place of newspapers. As a blogger, I'm not so sure about this. Blogs are great, but they produce mostly editorial content. Very few produce original content. Most blog posts link to news stories originally put together by reporters on the ground.

However, blogs can, and probably will, continue to evolve. Technologies already exist out there which can provide everyday citizens with the online tools they need to report on stories and essentially create their own newspaper. Free and open-source content management systems like Blogger, WordPress, and Drupal have the capability of doing these things. All three of these platforms are also really easy to set up and configure.

Even if blogs get to this point, it won't be because they're doing it for free. Like newspapers today, these newsblogs of the future will need reliable revenue streams. Currently, this seems to be the biggest mystery of all for both the traditional press and upcoming new media. Can online advertising catch up fast enough? Only time will tell.