Julia Sweeney fortæller om, hvordan hun fik en besked fra Gud.

"Many people think that newspapers have to survive because they have a mission for society, for democracy. Most of them say...if newspapers die, nothing will replace them. But that's not actually true. It's already slowly being replaced by the Internet." - Jacek Utko

This quote from the TED Blog is fodder for the Internet sheep out there. Those who think the blogosphere constitutes a real "press" or that blogging is "journalism." I'm not saying the internet isn't a medium of great potential or that newspapers have to survive. But a healthy, and predominantly free, press certainly should. This concept of robust media coverage is what the "many people" that Utko references are actually talking about when they emphasize "a mission for society, for democracy."

Although there's debate to how free our traditional media stands in the modern environment of media conglomerates, a healthy press is supposed to be free of private and political interests. Looking at blogs, the lines become blurred even further with so-called facts, unstated bias, editorializing, regurgitated news, personal reviews and spitfire comments. They're all, as Utko noted in his interview, opinion-based. Meaning most aren't relying heavily on original research or solid reporting in the way a professional journalism is.

Bloggers as a whole aren't analogous to the bands of reporters who often establish the foundation from which these Internet opinion-wielders later base their arguments from. The major newspapers are employing the gumshoes who cover beats, shadow public figures, toil over research and actually strive to write objective, coherent articles full-time. This is professional journalism. It's what a healthy press requires, and what a democracy needs in order to keep public interests at the forefront.

The online environment - in its current form - can't fully support this professional grade journalism, though the major players have thrown their newshounds into the fight anyway. In fact, major media is quickly gaining its online share of the