The media has long played an important role in delivering the news and keeping other powers in check. So what happens when the internet and blogs like this one have lowered the barrier to entry of news production down to zero, and we see the emergence of infinitely more substitutes for the daily paper? We now have three models for the news, the first being the for-profit paper (supported by advertising and patrons), the most popular examples being the New York Times Boston Globe International Herald Tribune camp in one hand and Murdoch Post Wall Street Journal News Corp in the other. The second is subsidized news, in which news is a public good (the BBC model of news), and approaches its objectivity and role in checking politics very seriously. And the third is the Joe Shmo’s Aguanomics variety of news, and it is this decentralization of news production that has redefined the news: now we have more voices, more perspectives. I’ll be the first to say that blogs are a growing part of my daily news appetite, and I know I’m not the only one who is changing tastes. Nevertheless, I still enjoy high quality investigative journalism, the type associated with a physical paper (perhaps you are familiar with reporter Gus Haynes from the HBO series The Wire). After all—how many blogs are going to spend the money (let alone money at all) on investigating critical issues like corruption that otherwise might not see the light of day?

Bottom line: It remains to be seen how the struggling paper model shifts its business practices to stay afloat (less international reporting, a shrinking broadsheet, outsourced distribution, moving online?), and how the brave crusaders on the internet stay as relevant to keeping corruption and politics in check as did the glorious dailies of the past.