This column spells out, in simple, common-sense terms, why newspapers come away bleeding revenue from fights with Web-based ad competitors. And, it makes me glad that my current home city — and employer — still sits under the Craig’s List radar.

Thanks to Poynter’s Steve Outing for the thoughts.

Also, welcome Local Man to the Web media fray. He’s connecting the dots between local and global.

Several think pieces have surfaced lately, and I wanted to share them.

After a long lapse, I’ve been reading Rhetorica again. This post holds particular interest. A nugget:

“… If the metaphor doesn’t shift for journalism it might not shift for the internet. The reason: Despite the possibility of creating online social networks (complex conversations), the internet still exists in the old, expository noetic field. If I am correct about the cultural importance of journalism, then it must shift if other forms of discourse are to shift.”

That is, journalism, if it is a jewel of public discourse, needs to evolve into the Web age, and help push the “conversation” along, or the resulting discussion will be flawed. Rhetorica riffs quite eloquently off this piece on the ubiquitous PressThink.

Together, these posts ask the question: Does a global conversation need moderators? As I’ve said recently, I think the world will always need editors - in that someone needs to ensure the discourse is civil, productive and fair. Bloggers, myself included, cannot perform that function through their current expository framework. I hear a lot about “journalism as conversation” from sites such as Dan Gillmore’s and about the morass the profession faces in revenue and credibility at sites like Newsosaur. But Rhetorica’s correct; we need to define “conversation,” and move there quickly.

Hint, rants aren’t conversations.

PressThink posits that the White House, through unstated and stated actions, means to “de-certify” journalists. Pour lemon juice in self-inflicted credibility wounds, as it were. George W. Bush has made public disdain for the media an art more than any of his predecessors in my short lifetime. Still, I think it’s bigger than that.

A small slice of news consumers will always prefer to hear - and believe - dispatches from government authority. They’re called sheeple. A small sliver will look at every dispatch from on high with deep-set skepticism. The vast field of blogs is filled with them, because passion brings out their voices.

The majority of us - the 80 percent who embody the curve of the bell - just want a thorough, though credible and fair, check to the balance of power.

The last post discussed the continued need for editors in the Internet era. Lest we forget, the real world also requires an editor’s touch.

This weekend the city posted its dedication to a local Army staff seargent who perished in Iraq. Letters on the sign at the downtown square spelled out the following:

Pray for our
fallen solider.

The heart is in the right place, but the i could use some work.

Debate slops back and forth about what blogs do to raze or raise journalism. I look at from an eat-to-survive standpoint.

I edit for a living. Editors take raw copy and cook it.

I’m pretty good at it — and don’t know much else. My cabinet has certain spices and styles I favor, just like everyone else. (I can’t stand it when writers use “impact” as a verb, for example.) Throwing those grammatical spices into a dish of raw copy gives me a thrill and pays the bills.

Can you smell the sweet aroma?

Think about it: Millions of pages of raw copy are posted to the Internet daily.

Tasty.

The smart news organizations will be the feeding troughs — or perhaps buffets, since blog flavors vary. Some blogs just aren’t journalism. On others, I’ve seen reporting that beats anything out there.

There’s enough journalistic, well-written and fair prose out there to keep editors’ tables full for a long time to come. The question is, will news producers bring the plate?

I recently bought Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii, proving that - despite my professed anti-ness - advertisements work. One of the big boxers roped me in.

The aspect of it that surprises me most reflects in the bandmates’ casualness. The first cassette I owned was Darkside of the Moon (well, it was a tie with Bat out of Hell). But, since I’m only 31, I’ve never known a Pink Floyd that isn’t an amusement park.

At one point, a bunch of cocky guys and a crapload of musical gizmos made up Pink Floyd. That era, most psych-snobs would agree, ended in my single-digit years.

But during their halcyon days, those guys took part in the making of this wonderful, imperfect film. It belies the honesty of people doing what they love. You can tell by their coolness and ego. At one point, Nick Mason predicts the group would eventually devolve into a group of relics.

Prescient, if you’re a fan of that era. I am.

The point I want to make though, lies in the complete lack of cynicism. It’s so, um, generative. Think of the difference between the Rolling Stones in 1970, and the same guys going through the motions in 2005 - as grandfathers. Or, closer to the Xer frame, imagine Nirvana in 1990 vs. the post-Cobain sell-a-thon. How about Tupac A.D.?

You get the idea. It’s American culture in 2005, and everything sinks into a dense layer of marketing after its vital shelf life.