Shirky: "Society doesn’t need newspapers. What we need is journalism."

Clay Shirky's Friday the 13th essay on his blog, "Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable," is being linked left and right because it is original and provocative. I call it an essay because it's way more than a post, extraordinarily thoughtful. It's got the whole package - the history of newspapers, never mind the printing press, and the central point that, regardless of how the information reaches us, we need journalism, even if we don't know precisely what vehicle will deliver it in the years to come. A very nice follow-on to my tearful post about the demise of The Rocky.