Robert Scoble, Scobleizer, wrote what, to me, was a really amazingly insightful article on how the newspaper industry has let the Net take away bits and pieces of its franchise until there’s almost nothing left. But he does  go on to mention a few remaining pieces worth saving and pursuing on or off line. ( The newspaper industry just gave away another free meal, er Twitter: do they have any left?).  Examples of the giveaways:

“Free meal #1. Giving away classified advertising to Craig’s List.
Free meal #2. Giving away photography to Flickr (look at the photos from the Chinese Earthquake, why didn’t this happen on a newspaper branded site?).
Free meal #3. Giving away front page news to blogs like Huffington Post.
Free meal #4. Giving away “small” community news like births, deaths, birthdays, etc to Facebook.
Free meal #5. Giving away real-time news to Twitter.
Free meal #6. Giving away news distribution to Google News and Amazon Kindle, among others. With new sites like Kosmix coming on strong (hundreds of percent of growth month over month).
Free meal #7. Giving away restaurant reviews to Yelp.
Free meal #8. Giving away traffic information to Google Maps.
Free meal #9. Giving away celebrity news to Facebook and Twitter. (Why is Oprah on both of those, and why didn’t the newspaper industry lock up Oprah and keep her on a newspaper brand?)
Free meal #10. Giving away local news to Topix (at least that was funded by a newspaper brand).
Free meal #11. Giving away business news to Yahoo Finance and Google Finance (and something new that will get announced tomorrow).
Free meal #12. Giving away news ranking to Memeorandum.
Free meal #13. Giving away astrology to Astrology.com.
Free meal #14. Giving away comics to Comics.com.

What is their latest giveaway? Crowd-sourced news. I visit Twitter Search every day to find out what is “hot news.” That’s something I used to look at newspapers and older media for (radio, TV) but Twitter is just plain better at telling me what is trending.”

Scoble goes on to discuss what the newspapers haven’t given away yet, and that gives us lots of clues to which areas might produce a useful path for a website or blog wanting to stand out from the crowd.

You really need to read Scoble’s article.  But a few of his ideas are developing and displaying a deeper understanding of a local scene.  Also, focusing to the extent you have and present a much deeper understanding of a narrower topic.

Few in the world of Twitter, make the investment of time to understand in great depth, a particular subject they twitter on. Twitter requires speed.  Understanding in depth requires time and reflection.  It’s possible to do both.  Twitter with speed on many topics but also send out the occasional Tweet linked to a blog or website with a post about a topic which reflects your thinking and your brand, something you’re researched and thought about in depth. That, I think, is one successful way forward.  One where we citizen journalists and bloggers can bring a lot to the table.