Supply of news is dwindling amid the digital media transformation

[Commentary] The word is out that we're embarking on a new golden age of journalism. In recent months some of the hottest names in the business -- the Washington Post's Ezra Klein, Nate Silver of the New York Times, Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal, Glenn Greenwald of the Guardian -- have jumped from their old perches to join or launch new digital news ventures aimed at melding their grasp of 21st-century technology to the old verities of news reporting and writing. It's exciting, and dangerous.

The danger is that these changes won't usher the old standards and goals of journalism into the future so much as relegate them to the past. And that may already be happening. If so, it will be a shame, because the leaders in the digital transformation of the news are among the most accomplished and promising voices in the field, who have delivered important reporting with real impacts on politics, government and business. What's unclear is whether their new business models will support the aggressive and expensive journalism that regional and national newspapers became known for during the last few decades, their era of peak profitability.