Actually, it’s not the fictional Dilbert saying this, but the creator of the ‘Dilbert’ strip, Scott Adams. And he’s saying that it’s looking pretty bleak for those folks who think journalism only happens on dead trees. He actually sees bloggers replacing newspapers, which is something even I don’t see happening:
In this imagined future, the newspaper publishers make the move to all-digital newspapers. But that won’t be much of a business unless they change the concept of a newspaper at the same time. What I’d like to see is a newspaper that is a hybrid of social voting, such as you see on web sites like www.reddit.com and www.digg.com, but further filtered by human editors who weed out the redundant, the juvenile, and the stuff unsubstantiated by facts. And I’d like to see counterpoints to everything. This way you’d get the stories and opinions considered most worthy by the public, with some editorial quality control.
I also imagine the business model for bloggers changing. Now bloggers run ads and make money based on the traffic to their sites. In the future, I can imagine bloggers opting in for a system where they allow newspapers to grab their content any time the newspapers want, move it into the newspaper’s own content model on any given day, surround it with their own ads, and pay the blogger a percentage of ad revenue. In other words, every blogger (and cartoonist) would be self-syndicated, but newspapers wouldn’t print the same bloggers every day. They’d grab only the best writings of the day based on social voting and the newspaper’s own editorial opinions.
Actually, this model begins with online news organizations replacing newspapers, which is something I think will eventually happen, despite Big Media’s anti-competitive practice of offering its content for free online (thus making it impossible for start up news orgs to charge small fee to get premium content). Adams also makes what I consider an argument about the economic inevitability of online news dominance:
I was reminded again of the power of economics when reading responses to my post yesterday on the future of newspapers. One of the more common dissenting opinions was that as long as grandpa is alive, there will be newspapers, because he will always want one. Readers who have the super power of economics training recognized that newspapers have high fixed costs and could become unviable if only a portion of younger readers cancel subscriptions. Grandpa is somewhat irrelevant to the future of newspapers, especially since advertisers don’t care much about him. To advertisers, one subscriber who is thirty-something is worth about seven grandpas.
I don’t think it’s a matter of young readers canceling subscriptions. It’s more a matter of younger people never picking up the local newspaper habit at all. There are fewer and fewer folks replacing grandpas when he dies off.
UPDATED: I am working on a post detailing what specific things I think newspapers ought to do to transition to the future online reality. I’ll post it later today.
Billy Dennis is a former reporter and editor at small daily and weekly newspapers in Illinois and Missouri. He comments on media, news and politics. He also owns and operates 
I don’t believe I’ve ever commented directly on what I think newspapers are doing to kill themselves. But after almost three decades in the biz, I think these are the main suicidal tendencies at many papers:
1. An unwillingness to take chances.
2. An unwillingness to do anything that might possibly offend anyone.
3. Too much space devoted to features.
In short, papers are doing something that doesn’t work. The solution is to try something else. This applies to the paper and Web editions.
Scott Adams is an idiot… and his comic strip isn’t very funny, either.
Scott Adams is a genius and his strip is simply too dry for unsophisticated intellects to enjoy. But, hey, there are people who enjoy seeing Dagwood eat a really big sandwich every other day.
Dagwood’s not funny, either, Billy. Unless he’s kicking Dilbert’s ass. I don’t find dry humor in Dilbert. I find a smug, over-the-top, “thinks he’s smarter than the rest” type of “intellect” at work… hmmmmm… could be it takes one to enjoy one, huh?
No wonder you don’t find Dilbert funny. One has to have a sense of irony, which you apparently do not have.
Billy, I find it ironic that you find “Dilbert” funny and ironic.
[...] still thinking about my post about Scott Adams belief that’s it’s an economic fact that online will eventually [...]
Hello webmaster, This is just what I was looking for!
[...] nu saying bloggers and search engines cannot replace newspapers. Trouble is, not one (well, except Scott Adams) thinks citizen journalism can replace full-time [...]