And what will take it’s place?
To quote Aristotle: “Nature abhors a vacuum”
Replacing a vacuum with a vacuum sounds like a steady state, though.
The alternative newspaper The Stranger. I'm only partly kidding. Aside from the Dan Savage gay sex columns and the boy-meets-sheep personal ads it actually does have an interesting article or two. This One, for example, about the next step for the staff of the PI. It's pretty good reporting for an alternative rag.
It would appear that the online version of the PI is going to be on the Free Republic model. I am absolutely not making that up. Story postings, links, comments.
This has some interesting implications. All the guff we've heard about "professional" journalists being able to do this oh so much better then us pajama-clad upstarts will get a real-world test. It will be interesting until the venture capital runs out. (The article makes the interesting point - unconfirmed - that the Huffington Post is still running on venture capital; i.e. it's subsidized by a sugar daddy for its survival).
One note for anyone clicking on the link - if you wander from the story not everything you find will be work-safe.