Editorial Content or Break in online?

An interesting article from Follow the Media which asks are Newspapers an essential Media?

Does it actually matter where we get our news from?

The real problem with newspapers today is what
publishers are doing in order to try and maintain those margins of yester-year.
Yes, they are investing in digital platforms which is good to make their
products multi-platform, but they are taking the shearing scissors to their
print operations with editorial feeling the brunt since to many publishers the
newsroom is little more than a cost center, certainly not a profit center. For
the most part they have not bought into the philosophy that the better the
editorial product the better they will do financially.

Lauren Rich Fine, Merrill Lynch’s top newspaper industry pundit commented last week that

“

Interest in news is greater today than it’s ever been.”
But for newspapers, “There’s no way to go back to where the industry has come
from.”

And the article gives an interesting point that I wholeheartedly agree with.

"newspapers are rushing into new editorial policies that
at their heart say that they will break their news on the Internet and that
print will be used for less time sensitive material. What they seem to fail to
understand is that it’s not where or how they are going to break their news that
is the problem, but rather what news is it that they are going to break? And
there is enough evidence out there to suggest that it is the local community
news people crave and the further you report from their front doors, the more
removed you are from their lives."