Some of us made a stab at the Aug. 21 Statehood Conference of trying to figure out what the media landscape would look like in 50 years, and surprisingly, the discussion was upbeat and optimistic.

Advertiser President and Publisher Lee Webber predicted that The Advertiser would be here in the year 2059, though in what form he had no idea. "The need for professionally generated and edited news will be there," he said. "I'm not sure exactly what it will look like but it will be a combination of print and digital."

KITV President & General Manager Mike Rosenberg pointed out that there are double the households watching local television news in 2009 than there were in 1971, rebutting critics who say nobody watches TV news. Because of developments in technology, including the transfer of FTP video packages and Skype video conferencing, Rosenberg said the next 50 years of local broadcasting "will be exciting as far as our ability to bring news electronically to the people of Hawai'i."

Scott Hogle, the director of sales at Clear Channel Communications, said all media must be mindful that consumers want to be in control of their content, when they want it and in the form they choose. "That gives all of us what we need more of and have less of, and that's time," he said.

Rick Blangiardi, the senior vice president and general manager of KGMB9 who helped announce a "shared services agreement" with KHNL this month, said his goal is to "change into a multi-media company rather than a television station because we know that model no longer works." Blangiardi said technology has changed "but the human need to find out what happened hasn't changed."

All but one of us at the media workshop represented the so-called "mainstream media," but blogger and social media advocate Ryan Ozawa made us aware that the product of citizen media, whether it be the Zapruder film, the Rodney King beating video or bloggers that unraveled CBS's bad reporting on President Bush and the Texas Air National Guard, continue to play a part in uncovering news.

But he knows that even though a day's worth of video pours into YouTube every hour, Facebook continues to explode and the number of blogs has exceeded 100 million, there is a need for the credibility, quality, context and variety of views provided by reputable news organizations.

"The online community is not known for good spelling or their ability to tell a story," Ozawa said to chuckles in the audience. "But more and more people are going out of their way to provide quality and setting themselves up as media outlets, so that will be a challenge."

The dilemma for all of us in the next 50 years won't just be maintaining the expense of our news outlets but to find out whether anyone will put a premium on the news that professional news journalists can deliver. Moreover, is that content something they will pay for or will they settle for everything else — uninformed opinion, mindless gossip and endless rumors and conspiracies — that costs nothing and passes for news?