Perhaps "Why lazy journalists deserve low pay" would be closer to the mark. But that's less of a reader-baiting headline, common in much of today's journalism. Oh, the irony...

Not really. It's obvious that we don't need the "lazy" journalists, the kind who just repost press releases with little analysis. Those are bound to go.

But we actually need less "proper" journalists too. A dozen proper, independent news outlets are probably sufficient to cover most world news from every important angle. Why should we need that coverage to be repeated a thousand times, for every major city? Why does the San Francisco Chronicle need someone covering the war in Iraq? Why does the Tribune de Genève need to cover american politics?

There is no need for this duplication of (good) coverage by proper journalists, when global, instant distribution is essentially free.

That is particularly true when you consider that the leading paper's stories will anyway be duplicated a hundred times over by thousands of bloggers who will inevitably capture all the minority viewpoints.

I agree more or less. I think it's important to have a regional view on events. For example, here in Quebec we have a couple of journalists in the mainstream media covering events in the United States. After the 9-11 attacks, all the coverage coming from US media was very patriotic and in a sense very biased where the coverage coming from abroad was more critical and factual. Even if an article reports only facts, it can still be biased depending on which facts are reported or how the article is framed.

I would say that the main problems with journalism these days are the reliance on pundits, commentators, the public and partisan organizations instead of analysts, good journalists and factually based editorials. In another life, I worked in a PR agency(not very proud...) and usually journalists(from reputable newspapers) would copy verbatim our press releases. The crap they publish is astounding...

Well that was quite a rant.

I think you're underestimating how many of the writers out there may be freelancers/retained freelancers, rather than staff hacks. Eg the Islington Twaddler's Silicon Valley correspondent may just be a desperate stringer, flogging stories wherever she/he can...

Perhaps - are you saying that we need this person flogging stories?

No, more that that person needs to flog stories to whoever will take them, even if that means being an X correspondent in country Y, despite their being little link.

There's also a whole side-conversation about diversity of opinion and reporting being key, but that does rely on high quality reporting, which we need more of.

Well, I'd say it's more than that. It's a fundamental shift. We'll need fewer journalists (the lazy ones) to get the same quality of news we get today.

s/lazy journalists/stenographers/g.

Speech to text, or text-to-text, translation isn't worth much anymore. Journalists will have to actually report on what's really going on, instead of hiding behind objectivity.