Seth Godin points out that bloggers aren’t going to be winning any Pulitzers — unless they are posting at major news sites already. He says:

So, Tom Friedman can win a well-deserved prize for writing what is essentially a blog for the NY Times, but if he goes off on his own, he’s out. What a shame. As newspapers melt all around us, faster and faster, the people in the newspaper business persist in believing that the important element of a news-paper is the paper part.

I am not sure that is true. John Gapper at the Financial Times has a well thought-through discussion of what it might really mean that newspapers are dying.

The question for national and international reporting is not whether city papers survive but whether news organisations such as The New York Times do. Clearly, if they did not, and blogs were left alone to provide coverage of Washington and Iraq, there would be a problem.

Gapper’s point, among others (and I recommend the whole article) is that news-gathering, which is the core business of the major newspapers, takes resources that bloggers, even when aggregated into something like, say Pajamas Media, just don’t have.

Something has to keep feeding our appetite for news, and blogs can’t fill it. They provide commentary, analysis, sarcasm, thoughtful argument, and behind the scenes facts — but not news.

So, while the “paper” part of newspapers may well be crumbling, I don’t think news institutions as a whole are going the way of the dodo. Sure, daily newspapers may fade — but not all. Instead, I imagine their newsgathering efforts being consolidated into a handful of players.

It’s already happening to an extent. The Web has allowed Reuters and AFP to rise. CNN is considering competing against the Associated Press as a wire service.

As a blogger, I depend on news items to come over the transom. So, I hope the “mainstream media” does not crumble!