Newsweek is a much smaller and leaner organization than it once was, and yet it probably needs to be much thinner to become profitable again. Trying to stay viable, Newsweek long ago shifted more to the expert opinion model that is prevalent today because it’s much cheaper to get a think-tank expert in Washington to write a piece on China’s economy rather than to put three reporters on the case in Beijing.

But the big question remains: If the traditional heavyweights can’t afford to do the hard investigative work that is the heart of good journalism, who will? Certainly not individuals sitting at home in their robes in front of their PCs, tossing out half-baked opinions about Afghanistan and Lindsay Lohan. Good journalism is crucial to a well-functioning democratic society—and at its most basic functions as a watchdog, scrutinizing the actions and behavior and policies of those in power. Lose it and you get incompetence and corruption on a wide scale. This is the dilemma that the industry faces as it migrates to new medium. What’s terrifying, of course, is that while every information provider must have a dynamic website, almost nobody has figured out how to make money from the Internet. The New York Times spends millions covering the world—and can’t continue to give away its content. (Here, have a Mercedes.)

Before long, a new web-based hierarchy for news, analysis and opinion will emerge, and it may even include a few traditional players like Newsweek. But it’s likely to be a broader and more diverse group than in the past—and even the most popular will have to be run very efficiently in this fractured—and utterly fascinating—media landscape.