Even without the downturn in the economy the news media (not just newspapers) would still be in crisis.

The financial crisis itself is taking away advertising dollars from all news media contributing to quicken the process of editorial change, which needs to be born out of the minds of journalists themselves.

We cannot afford to keep writing in the same fashion as always.  The media long ago embraced the immediacy of information, accelerated by the electronic media, and now turned into a continuous hourly flux, even minute by minute thanks to the Internet.

Stubborn in its way of divulging information, limited just to words and images properly laid out on a page, nowadays that model has fewer readers than ever before, just at the time when new frontiers have been open to audiovisual media, for the printed word itself, now coupled with an infinite freedom to be divulged throughout the internet.

We can no longer afford to romantically muse about the journalism of the past, having thousands of people nowadays readily disposed to become civilian journalists, while experienced journalists walk around scared always fearful of even touching the new tools furnished by technology.

This being the state of the news media, this crisis was necessary, actually it isn’t a crisis at all but a natural selection process of sorts, driven by the ability to adapt.

The natural selections process –and this goes for the Hispanic Media- is a consequence of the loss the advertising pool of money, it will be even harder to survive for those accustomed to dwell in mediocrity and their dubious intent to publish a newspapers simply as an easy opportunity to profit.

It is a time for adaptation, because the “new” journalist besides multitasking –generating video, audio, and photography- now needs to tell stories thinking in terms of receiving replies from a public more disposed to react and far more skeptical of the journalist with a degree or vast experience.  In other words a no longer credulous public less willing to believe in the stories coming from the traditional news media has now access to hundreds of alternate sources of information throughout the Internet.

We cant expect less from an audience now privileged with a wealth of information never seen before in history, and more selective in terms of searching only what it deems relevant to its personal interests and has no patience towards news on display offering no chance for dialogue.

Journalists meanwhile should not be paralyzed with the frightful question of whether the Internet will kill the newspapers.

The real question is whether real journalists will let this grand opportunity – a true privilege of our generation – to go past them and not harness their own experience, criteria and capacity to discern to tackle the “new media” and by means of it being able and willing to dialogue with a public otherwise exhausted by the news and with a strong desire to have an open and intelligent discussion of the issues that really matter.

Journalists should decide whether to lose this match to the tide of “bloggers” or if they will seize the new concept proposed by such bloggers to begin a new era of a new two-way journalism.