Does society have anything to lose if newspapers disappear? Will democracy suffer if people are no longer able to get their news from ink printed on a flattened tree? These are questions asked by Maclean’s columnist Andrew Potter recently. His answer: “I highly doubt it.”

He writes:

“My own sense is that the industry is taking on a barbell shape: we’re going to have a number of large national or international branded news sources (CNN, WSJ, NYT) that will handle the big stuff, while medium-sized city papers will shrink or disappear entirely, supplanted by community papers and metro-blogs…

The newspaper may be dead, maybe there’s life in the old medium yet. A lot of journalists might have to find some other way of baking their bread. But the news will live on, and democracy will continue to flourish.”