Can bloggers fill the gap?

One of the arguments often heard over the decline of newsprint and the transition to online is that the online community and the blogosphere will retain the role of the fourth estate.

Writing at the Washington Post (ht-Adrian Monck) Marc Fisher that bloggers can't fill the gap left by a shrinking press corps.and adds that

"The smaller the press corps gets, the more you see personality stories rather than pieces about what is at stake for people,"

and makes the point that

Many bloggers say that far from being able to replace professional reporters, they actually suffer from the diminished flow of state news. "What I can't offer on my blogs is the relationships, the institutional memory, the why, the history that reporters who know the capital can bring to their stories