Mike Davidson

Newsvine co-founder Mike Davidson doesn't hold out much hope for daily newspapers, which is hardly newsworthy given the recent problems plaguing the industry. But Davidson's remarks -- made today at the University of Washington Foster School of Business lecture series in downtown Seattle -- certainly drove that point home.

Asked by moderator Christine Chen whether there's any future for newspapers, the 34-year-old Internet entrepreneur bluntly replied: "No, there isn't. And there isn't even a present, unfortunately."

That's not to blame newspapers for the mess, which Davidson said employ a lot of smart people and do good work. They really got stuck in an old distribution model.

"It is not the P-I that failed. It is not The Seattle Times that's failing. It is the medium of the newspaper that is obsolete," said Davidson, who sold Newsvine to MSNBC.com in October 2007. "The future is not so bright for newspaper companies, and the one reality that I think is the toughest to deal with is the concept that the news business is probably shrinking.... It is not not a growth business anymore. It is much more distributed."

Davidson didn't let newspapers off the hook completely, noting that they failed to allow people in online communities to talk to one another. That's something that Craigslist mastered, he said. And now money-losing newspapers are paying for that mistake.

"I think we may be a zero newspaper town quicker than any major city around," he said. "It is definitely going to be a domino effect.... The writing is on the wall and the writing has been on the wall for several years."

Of course, the flood of information now flowing through blogs, Twitter and online news publications has a downside. And it won't be a substitute for some of the hard-hitting journalism performed by newspapers, an issue that Davidson said is one of the toughest to address.

He cited a recent investigation by The Seattle Times into snow removal policies during last December's winter blast, a story that Davidson admitted that most bloggers would not have thought to pursue.

While community activists or bloggers might take up the cause, Davidson said some of the investigative style journalism will likely be lost. After all, not every story can be told in the 140 characters through Twitter.

An infrequent Twitter user, Davidson said that the online publishing tool is catching on because of ease of use and laziness. And that's not necessarily a good thing.

"We have so many inputs now that we are at risk at making ourselves dumber as a society instead of smarter," he said. "It reaches a certain point that you have so much information that you are looking at that you just aren't paying enough attention to what you are reading."

When users select the news they don't always choose the most important stories, with Davidson referencing the popularity of the Enumclaw bestiality story from four years ago.

During the Q&A session, I asked Davidson what he thought of asking people to pay for online content. Davidson said it's a tough proposition, though he would consider paying a monthly fee for a "small basket" of his favorite blogs.

The other idea is that news organizations could charge for exclusive content. "In the last several years, mainstream media has almost over syndicated themselves," he said.

More on the changes in the newspaper industry from Google's Eric Schmidt, who today told the Newspaper Association of America that the industry will have to make money through a combination of advertising, micropayments and online subscriptions.