Virtual Economics: Why newspapers are not screwed ...newspapers' core value is not their content but their validation. Sure it's expensive to create content. In the long run this probably doesn't really matter. There's plenty of content. The value that newspapers add to the picture is verifying which of it is true.

The problem with many of the assumptions about the democratizing power of the internets, has been exactly this. The fact that anybody can post something online still doesn't obviate the social needs for establishing networks of trust. That goes for art, as well as music. Often, people are not sure whether it is appropriate to like something until an appropriate trusted sources has given it a seal of approval. The problem is that there is privilege and power associated with being in a center of a network of trust. So a lot of people will vie for that position thus disturbing the supposedly egalitarian nature of the environment. Social networking can replicate some of this by automating trust (such as Digg's algorithms) but it can't completely do away with it. That's why it's likely that something newspaper-like will persist long after the last printed copy of the New York Times has been sold. (Of course, hopefully, it will have been replaced by ereaders with proper eink.)