Blogger and Newspaperman Battle: What's the Future of Journalism?

"Let's not forget that the conventional [media] missed the two biggest stories of our time -- the run-up to the war and the financial meltdown," she said.

The clicks newspapers get from aggregators can be monetized, according to Marissa Mayer, vice president of searches at Google, the main aggregator of news on the Internet.

Mayer said newspapers have to start viewing their product not as a newspaper, but as an amalgam of individual stories that are marketed, much like the music industry has adapted to view each individual song on an album as a distinct product to be sold on iTunes or Amazon.com.

She said such innovation will save newspapers and journalism and it's "a product that can increase engagement."

Even so, Moroney said the millions of visitors to the Dallas Morning News Web site have not translated into enough revenue.

"The Dallas News gets 6 million unique visitors a month and it can't pay for two-thirds of the newsroom," Moroney said.

"Down to the article level?" he said of Google. "I believe it's down to the first four lines. They're making plenty of money down to the first four lines."

Steve Coll, a Pulitzer Prize winner and former managing editor of the Wall Street Journal, said he was leery of large newspaper chains being given special treatment to collude on their content and charge for it. He endorsed the idea of allowing newspapers to become nonprofit entities and suggested that Congress consider revamping public service requirements for broadcasters who use public bandwidth.

"An old order is dying in journalism and a new one is rising," Coll said, "and I think the question is: [Are] there ways to reinforce the bridge between these two?"