Bill Keller, the executive editor of the New York Times, tonight issued a stark warning that the supply of reliable news reporting is dwindling despite the internet-driven worldwide information explosion.
Delivering this year's Hugo Young memorial lecture to an audience at Chatham House in London, Keller said that the gravest danger to the future of newspapers was not political pressure, nor the "acid rain" of criticism from the blogosphere or new technology upending the business model.
"It is a loss of faith, a failure of resolve on the part of the people who make newspapers."
Keller said that bloggers, internet search engines and satirical talk shows had blossomed across the world but could never replace reporting.
"That may sound like a strange thing to say in the age of too much information."
He referred to a "media tsunami" of blogs, Google News, RSS feeds, social networking websites like MySpace and online video file-sharing operations such as YouTube.
"The civic labor performed by journalists on the ground cannot be replicated by legions of bloggers sitting hunched over their computer screens," Keller said.
"It cannot be replaced by a search engine. It cannot be supplanted by shouting heads or satirical television shows. What is absent from the vast array of new media outlets is, first and foremost, the great engine of newsgathering - the people who witness events, ferret out information, supply context and explanation."
Even in locations that were the source of major news stories, such as Baghdad, the number of reporters was declining, Keller said. "Here's a statistic that should make your heart sink. When Saddam Hussein fell, there were more than 1,000 western reporters in Iraq. Today, at any given time, there are about 50."
Here's the full text of the speech: Not dead yet - The newspaper in the days of digital anarchy