A few weeks ago the Seattle Post-Intelligencer dropped regular service and went online. Last week the Ann Arbor News–the newspaper that gave me my first paid journalism gig–gave notice that it was following suit. Today both Detroit newspapers cut their home delivery service to three days and ramp up their online presence. 

I’ve talked about this before. What we’re seeing is a shift that will have significant long term consequences. And some of them may be dire. I think that critiques about suck-ass content are on the money. But what is the alternative?

Here’s one. With the slow death of the only institutions that up to now have the capacity (if not the will) to do real investigative journalism, what will replace it? Huffington’s work will barely fill the need of Baltimore much less the nation, but it’s at least possible that other non-profits or people with loot will subsidize similar endeavors.

But, here’s the one I’m interested in. If you could publish your own full color magazine, what would it be about?

Better yet, if you could take out the [substitute your daily newspaper here], what type of content would you use to do it with? Could you get advertisers to subsidize it?