Seth Godin asks what "When newspapers are gone, what will you miss?" His answer: "investigative reporting." But Godin is optimistic:
...if we really care about the investigation and the analysis, we'll pay for it one way or another. Maybe it's a public good, a non profit function. Maybe a philanthropist puts up money for prizes. Maybe the Woodward and Bernstein of 2017 make so much money from breaking a story that it leads to a whole new generation of journalists.
The reality is that this sort of journalism is relatively cheap (compared to everything else the newspaper had to do in order to bring it to us.)
(Hat tip: Doctorow)