This isn’t my question – but it’s what a bunch of trans-continental, anglophone types will be pondering across this month’s Carnival of Journalism.

Personally, I don’t have a lot of time or interest in geographically-based, local journalism (see Local Schmokel). I subscribe to the New Yorker despite the listings.

There’s nothing local about our online Carnival of Journalism. And the ‘localness’ that defined British journalism ended in the 1980s, when Fleet Street was abandoned as the physical and social centre of UK national newspapers.

Whilst the Washington Post (LoudounExtra) has attempted to localize its online journalism, Rupert Murdoch has decided that the editorial future of the Wall Street Journal (perhaps the world’s most geographically specific publication) is at the national and international level.

And as for growth, well it’s shrinking revenues, content and jobs that everyone’s fighting these days. Craig Newmark has ended up serving local classified markets in the US and supplanting the role of newspapers as a local market for information on services.

Enthusiast-produced content will continue to flourish online, and localities may well have their advocates and chroniclers. But issues and interests unite us more effectively than ZIP and postal codes.

Online journalism is better the more interesting it is, and interest generally implies richness (intellectual, emotional, social, etc.). Whether that richness comes from the super-exertion of a passionate individual or from the professional work ethic of a salaried journalist is really not of great moment to the end-user.

Passion, however, is its own reward. Pay-cheques traditionally require things like subscription and advertising. In the future, journalism may well survive as information advocacy. It’s already heading there with some NGOs. And yes – in the future – all journalism may be not-for-profit.

So people will take it where they can get it. This environment is what Charlie Beckett calls networked journalism. It’s here. And in confronting it, some of us may wish to die on our feet, but to the survivors I suggest we get used to walking on our knees.