It would be easy to take the blogger’s road with Neil Henry’s piece at the San Francisco Gate: he’s an old dinosaur who gets many of parts of his rant wrong with his discussion of the decline of traditional media in the face of Google. Yes, yes — that much is plain. But how about what’s right with the rant?

How about the part about the role journalists play as a mechanism to balance the massively dumbed down soundbites that often pass for news? How about holding oneself to a higher standard, where conflicts of interest are avoided, rather than courted?

While I’m a fan of citizen journalism, the subtext of what Professor Henry is saying is true: there is an overwhelming drive towards mediocrity in many western / north american cultures with respect what ordinary people want to read about or be informed about.

If what passes as popular culture is indicative of what the public wants, then its clear they don’t want to be challenged — they want to be entertained.

And I think that’s as much of a driving factor behind the decline of traditional news outlets as any other.

I’m not sure *what* the solution is, but I do believe that technology and services such as Google are inevitable in the way that they are able to repopulate and recirculate the news as it shows up. But precisely because Google — or if not Google, some other piece of web technology would be doing it — tears down the walls between different news outlets and shows them side by side do we actually get an understanding that for *most* news pieces, for global news, well … the reporting is actually pretty similar.

Do yourself a favour and go to Google News right now to see what I mean. News is logically grouped into bunches, with all the news from different outlets being provided under a single headline from a particular news source.

Inevitably very few provide any real perspective or opinion on the matter. Many, it appears, simply repeat what everyone else is saying.

My heart goes out to people who are talented, but who can’t find a job. But I think the problem has LESS to do with journalists and more to do with the institutions they belong to.

Newspapers, not journalists, are having trouble with finding ways for their print revenues to grow.

Newspapers, not journalists, are pushing towards their own content to what appears to be a rehashing of global content found around the world.

And its Newspapers, not journalists, who seem to be more concerned about rescuing “lost” revenue from Google than coming up with evolutionary ideas about how their businesses should run.

But yet its Newspapers, and traditional institutions that are like them, which are really in the position to enforce what Professor Henry is alluding to — and that is a sense of best practices for journalists.

I love blogging as much as the next man, but I think that its precisely because of its independent and cozy or colluding nature (which is sometimes a good thing, as Mike Arrington will attest) that we still need good journalism.

Sometimes that can come from blogging and bloggers.

But as the paid posting movement shows, when you own your own blog and are beholden to your own best interests rather than the public good … sometimes that doesn’t produce the best blogging *or* reporting.

I don’t know if getting Google to sponsor journalists is a good thing. After all, then all it does is cast aspersions on the integrity of those journalists when it comes to their coverage of Google.

So what *would* be the solution?

Well if the answer were simple all of traditional media outlets would be pursuing it already. But clearly its an uphill battle for two reasons — one, technology makes it hard to monopolize a given district or region when it comes to news; and two, traditional media lives in a milieu where its audience may not always know or understand what is “good” for them.

In a market driven economy, after all, the Lindsay Lohan’s of the world will always outrank Peace in the Middle east.

Can citizen reporters, bloggers, and all manner of “amateur” reporters replace professional journalists? I’m not sure, but I think that the line is blurring. And whatever is the outcome of the evolution we’re witnessing, I’ll agree with Neil Henry on one point:

No matter who is doing the reporting, there ought to be some method of ensuring some, or perhaps, most, stick to both issues that are important, and moreover, the ethical and moral high road when the potential for conflict of interest arise.

[we can debate what "important" means, however, I think we can all agree that celebrity culture isn't one of them]