Harper’s boss Rick MacArthur on blogging, paywalls, his editor shakeup and the future of journalism – Poynter

Every idiot who could blog, and claim to be covering the local zoning commission, could say he was a journalist competing with the local paper. Readers learned not to differentiate and to see a free blog as same thing as the guy writing for the local paper. “And the paper doesn’t think it’s worth any money and is not charging me.” Then, the paper, having trained people to want information for free, diseducated people about the difference between a real reported story and something off the top of the head.