Ann Arbor Online Media: Future of Journalism in South Dakota?

Doug Wiken wrote a really good post yesterday about Jim Lehrer's guidelines for good journalism. Bloggers, take heed!

Doug's post sent me looking through the new website for the PBS NewsHour, which is revamping as the 75-year-old Lehrer promotes a new integration of TV and Web on the flagship news program (old dogs, new tricks!). The program has latched on to the Patchwork Nation series put together by Dante Chinni, whom I met summer before last at a citizen journalism conference. Patchwork Nation offers this really interesting story about Ann Arbor, Michigan, where online journalism is filling the vacuum left by the demise of the newspaper:



Could an online media landscape be the future for a place like Sioux Falls, where Gannett might decide it can't afford to keep the presses running and sending trucks out in the dark and the snow every morning? In a post-Argus world, could ThePostSD.com and a dozen blogs become the central voices of the city? Or might that media revolution happen first in South Dakota in a "heavily wired, tech-savvy college town," someplace like, oh, say, Madison?

If it does, fellow bloggers, we'd better reread Lehrer's guidelines.