"Local reporting positions are being slashed all over. So we actually have, I think, the same kind of crisis in miniature in local news, which as you correctly point out, is the heart of much local journalism. Much of the journalism in the U.S. we have is national stories. And [the problem] may be worse because the open source and the distributed solutions that Jay [Rosen] and Jeff [Jarvis] and others have been talking about are much less available in local communities.

"You can have blogging, but the kind of larger pool of people who are going to do the sort of real reporting that supplements or complements the kind of work that goes on nationally doesn't exist. We're trying to do an experiment in open-source journalism right now in Madison, I don't know if we'll succeed or not. But there's a need for it . . . .

"We just finished a study, there were 630, roughly, civic or public-journalism projects in the United States that were done over about 10 years. They were wonderful, there was great journalism done in many of those 630 projects. But what happened was that newspapers themselves -- most of them were driven by newspapers -- decided to pull the plug on them. Why? Because they got tired of them, they got bored, they were too much work, they weren't profitable.

"So for that great work to be done, it has to be maintained by the citizens themselves. And I think that's one place where open source, local journalism has to take up the mantle . . . ."