Round and round this goes, with the people committed to saving newspapers demanding to know “If the old model is broken, what will work in its place?” To which the answer is: Nothing. Nothing will work. There is no general model for newspapers to replace the one the internet just broke.

I mentioned Clay Shirky in passing when I wrote about the imminent demise of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (now just days away), and now Clay himself has written a longer article discussing how newspapers solve a problem which no longer exists, economically speaking: The cost of distributing news is no longer tied to the physical printing press. How we cover the costs of collecting news, of performing investigative journalism, rooting out corruption, etc., is the interesting question going forward.

(Link via Boing Boing.)