If we're so irrelevant, why are you reading us?

It is easy to understand the loud chorus declaring the fusty old newspaper dead. The reader's world is not what it used to be.

Gone are the days of a city newspaper and three network stations providing the news. Readers now have the ability to tailor Web sites to their news preferences and can pick and choose how to consume news from a buffet line of gadgets.

You, the reader, already know this. While this tidal wave of devices and new delivery methods has threatened newspapers, it has not obliterated the industry. Nor will it.

The yearly report about the state of the news media by the Project for Excellence in Journalism reinforces much of what I suspected about newspapers and splinters of the business, such as blogs and citizen media. The report pushes back on the notion that blogs and news-related Web sites are killing newspapers.

The report states, "Even with so many new sources, more people now consume what old-media newsrooms produce, particularly from print, than before ... [R]esearch shows blogs and public-affairs Web sites attract a smaller audience than expected and are produced by people with even more elite backgrounds than journalists."

Interesting. So much of what is blogged, aggregated and disseminated through news portals is produced by the staid newspaper. That goes against the argument that we journalists in the mainstream have become irrelevant.

The much-ballyhooed flexibility and user-friendly world of blogs and the like turns out to be a bit rigid and not as malleable as believed.

PEJ's study found that citizen media provide readers with little chance for input other than the ability to comment on the site's content. Findings also demonstrated that it is uncommon for citizen media to permit the posting of reader-generated content and that blogs are even more restrictive.

Apparently, the new media rabble-rousers are societal elites with some time on their hands who possess the minimal creativity of the newspaper of a decade ago.

I am not wagging my column in a "I told you so" way at citizen journalists or bloggers — well, maybe a little. I believe the explosion of people using technology to get the news and express themselves is healthy for democracy and can complement traditional news outlets such as newspapers.

Newspapers should want an engaged, knowledgeable readership. Newspapers will succeed in communities that are steeped in current affairs and passionate about their city. A community's most engaged residents likely supplement their newspaper consumption with a healthy portion of blogs and news and opinion portals.

These alternative sites should realize that a large segment of their content originates from newspapers. By no means am I suggesting that bloggers take it easy on newspapers. Journalists should be able to deal with pokes and jabs and merited criticism. Journalists also have to embrace the present and future and learn how to incorporate the best of the new alternatives available.

Outside the newsroom, bloggers and citizen journalists have to consider what newspapers mean to towns, cities and regions.

Newspapers are valuable institutions that have spent many decades building communities. That has not changed. If anything, newspapers have the ability to be more influential because they now reach more people than ever through the combination of print and the Internet.

I am convinced newspapers have a future. So do citizen journalism and blogging. The sustained success of these different news outlets can only help keep people informed.

It is time to stop trumpeting a death that will not come and focus on the business of doing great journalism in whatever form that might be.

Ryan Blethen's column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times. His e-mail address is rblethen@seattletimes.com; for a podcast Q&A with the author, go to Opinion at seattletimes.com