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.