For my weekly writing spot on this site, see the One-Minute Mystic, with a new meditation posted every Monday. Also see The Village, the story of Misty Longings, England's most beautiful village, posted episode by episode earlier this year.       I've just returned from a pub in West London. We were saying goodbye to my sub-editor at the Daily Mail, recently made redundant. He was cheerful enough, and at 43, has exciting plans to re-invent himself. But what of the industry he leaves? Will that be equally inventive? Some people think newspapers are dead on their feet already. A high-powered lawyer said this: "It's all about the internet. Twenty years ago, no lawyer had a computer on his desk; now everyone does. Why would I pay for a paper, when I can get it all free online?" A journalist agreed, but gave the matter another twist. Her younger sister, in her twenties, never buys newspapers. "It's a generation thing," she said. "Young people have no interest in news now; not in the traditional sense. Entertainment news matters, but there are magazines for that." Her friend, however, another journalist, disagreed. "No one reads the papers in their twenties, but when she's older she will – by which time they'll be free. It's a way to raise circulation, and therefore benefit from increased advertising revenue. That's the way ahead." A top newspaper executive agrees it's bleak. He points to falling ad revenues, rising production costs and a migration to the web. He also sees loyal readers dying off and "an ever stupider population that doesn't like reading and isn't interested in conventional news anyway." So he believes that in five years time a number of familiar titles will be gone; but that others will survive, and not be free. "That doesn't work. Take away the cover price and rely on fickle advertising revenue? You're courting disaster." And as for papers online: "the net doesn't make any money for newspapers; and whether it ever will, is seriously open to question." And then, of course, there's the sheer "scrunchiness" of the newspaper. "You can stuff The Sun in your back pocket, take it on the bus and read it in the canteen. You can't do that with a laptop." Some celebrate this decline of centralised news outlets, which give editorial power to the few. Here is the chance for local communities to reclaim both the news and their identity, with online community newspapers linking people in a new way. "You wouldn't have an editor so much as a facilitator, bringing the jigsaw pieces of local life together," said one promoter of this vision. "Everyone knows it's the future." But even in his idealised new world of community news and cohesion – a super-size parish magazine – money remains a factor. It takes time and skill to investigate and report. If people are not paid to do it, then will it happen? The irony is that for the press to stay free, we'll probably need to pay for it. Journalism – as defined by "reporting, watching, sharing, answering and explaining" – will survive, as will its essential virtues of integrity, completeness, courage, timeliness and relevance. But how will it look? Because at present, many say we're just papering over the cracks. More writings © Simon Parke