Imagine a world in which newspapers have been wholly replaced by online news sites… not so hard is it?! And somehow, without even trying, it makes sense.

Jeff Jarvis muses the idea in his Guardian column today, referring first of all to a vision outlined to him by Edward Roussel, head of digital for the Telegraph. Roussel’s vision is that Google becomes an online distribuitor for a paper’s content so it can concentrate on its real job (journalism).

And Bob Wyman, a technology entrepreneur, agrees: "If Google can provide free hosting to the 'citizen journalists' who are making life difficult for the newspapers, Google should be able to host the newspapers for free as well." It’s a good point and one which lends weight to the idea that the days of hard copy news papers are numbered.

And there are more:

·         As Wyman points out, Google, with all its services (search engines, alert systems, video serving, database services, application hosting), is kitted out to be the ideal news distributor: "Ideally, every newsroom would be able to think of Google, and all its capabilities, as their own”

·         Moving to an online news model which offers publications the opportunity to concentrate wholly on content (and not worry about distribution) should also, one would hope, have a positive affect on the quality of copy

·         If audience/reader interaction and conversation is moving online then a hard copy newspaper’s content essentially becomes isolated – from both dialouge and commerical opportunity

·         And surely online better reflects contemporary lifestyles…

·         Plus of course there are the environmental benefits…

So already (I think) the argument for waving goodbye to newspapers and moving online is becoming really rather compelling.