RALEIGH – Among the many big stories in politics and business to be watching this year is the fate of newspaper journalism, particularly at the state and local levels of government.

Governing magazine just published a fascinating, if disquieting, piece about the decline of the state press corps in capitals across the country. And many journalism pros are openly discussing the very real possibility that major daily newspapers may shut their doors in the coming months. The two dailies in Detroit, the News and the Free Press, have already stopped daily distribution of their print editions. The Rocky Mountain News in Denver seems about to fold (I’ve got a friend there who isn’t sanguine about its prospects). Even the big national players like The New York Times may not survive in their current form.

Here in North Carolina, the Greensboro News & Record has reportedly been for sale for many months, with no serious takers. The Raleigh News & Observer and The Charlotte Observer are among the North Carolina holdings of the Sacramento-based McClatchy chain, which has lost a huge percentage of its market capitalization. The entire chain appears to be worth little more than half of what the Kentucky-based Paxton paid for just the Durham Herald-Sun four years ago.

I feel for my friends among the ink-stained-wretches class. But that’s not the only reason to be concerned about the trend. While mainstream daily newspapers have always had their critics, particularly in communities where a paper’s editorial stance differs substantially from the prevailing public sentiment, they’ve often played a critical role in reporting the news and holding public officials accountable. Some broadcast outlets do a good job, too, but most stations devote little time or resources to substantive reporting about governmental meetings, operations, and outcomes. Furthermore, daily newspapers have often been large-scale conduits for other voices expressing opinions on politics and public policy issues, via press conferences, press releases, columnists, and op-eds.

The current problem is not really about readership. In North Carolina, at least, the major papers have more readers than ever before. But many of these readers are now consuming the news and information product online rather than on paper. It has proven to be extremely difficult to turn those readers into a sizable revenue stream. Once mainstays of commercial advertising such as employers, car dealers, and real estate found their way to the Internet, newspaper companies could no longer boast the best avenue for reaching large numbers of consumers at low cost.

From an economic context, it was progress. If you want to buy a car, buy a home, or find a job, searchable databases are often going to be a far better way to shop than scanning display ads. But the web revolution in advertising knocked the legs out from under the standard model for serious daily journalism.

Don’t despair – new models will arise. But they may take a while. In the meantime, coverage of state government could shrink, with deleterious consequences.

I think one model will be going the (intentionally) nonprofit route. Current examples would include public radio and Carolina Journal itself. Both raise revenue through individual givers, corporate underwriting, and foundation grants. In other states, media outlets published by think tanks, universities, and foundations are starting to pop up, as are independent web-based operations sustained by a little bit of advertising and a lot of optimism. Do some of these start-ups have clear political points of view? Sure. So what? That’s what American journalism looked like for the first century of the country’s existence, and how a lot of “mainstream” newspapers have functioned in recent times, anyway.

There’s plenty of opinion on the web. That’s not the issue. What is needed are reporting outfits to bring new information to the table for columnists, bloggers, and commenters to chew on. Newspapers have done much of journalism’s heavy lifting – with varying degrees of fairness and accuracy, I grant you – but things are changing. The work still needs to be done.

And, no, CJ isn’t hiring right now – but feel free to check back with me in a few months.

Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation