The crisis of investigative reporting

I caught Walter Isaacson on the Daily Show last night (video here) talking about the future of newspapers and it was pretty scary.

Isaacson has written a long piece for Time magazine suggesting that media organisations have to find a way of charging for Internet content or journalism will die. His thinking is that if we are reliant entirely on advertising then there will be no demand for good old-fashioned investigative journalism, which is driven by the relationship between reporter and reader.

Stewart put it to Isaacson that the only way to save the print media was to invent narcotic ink, and I’m nearly as pessimistic. However, I’m with Isaacson on the crisis of investigative reporting.