TL;DR. Stop pleading. Start actually finding news! The final three paragraphs seemed like a plea for government or government-related funding. That is, for the

TL;DR. Stop pleading. Start actually finding news! The final three paragraphs seemed like a plea for government or government-related funding. That is, for the public to pick up the tab because they do read news (just not from them). While this can work quite well as part of a general public media body, you rarely expect cutting edge investigative journalism from such public organisations who face their own funding and political justification pressures constantly. At the end of the day, newspapers are struggling because they have created a model that does not differentiate themselves from anyone else. This is especially the case when it took something like Wikileaks, which has always considered itself to be as much a journalism organisation as a whistleblowing haven, to show how little newspapers contribute to new knowledge, and if anything are merely tools of others. The second function of newspapers, as a sort of social bulletin board system is being slowly undermined by new media, however on this front, the more locally-connected papers seem to be faring quite well for now. Though in the end, even these will be unable to catch up to the speed and breadth of updates available via new media, unless they embrace it themselves. No matter what failings it may have otherwise had, Wikileaks and now others have demonstrated that at core crowdsourced news can be a compelling model, IF you operate a highly trustworthy and ethical platform, for example. That said, nothing can really replace true investigative journalism.