When it was established that I was the only “blogger” at the table the other evening, the assumptions I was a walking font of knowledge on all matters bloggy were not far behind.

Mind you some of the questions were interesting, including “do you think blogging will bring about the demise of newspapers?”

Now there’s something that a lot of people have been talking about for a while, and there’s certainly little doubt that the citizen journalist is on the rise.

Everyone a writer, everyone a publisher, everyone a citizen journalist.

Put that way citizen journalist sounds an easy enough gig, something we could all do, but there’s a number of obstacles to overcome before newspapers will be dispatched to the dustbin of history, if at all.

For one, citizen journalist has to establish a few credentials. Things like integrity, authority, editorial independence, trustworthiness, and accuracy. There’s more of course.

While newspapers by no means have a monopoly on these virtues, many people inherently believe they do. People who read newspapers. People like me.

That’s not to say a blogger can’t achieve the sort of respect some newspapers enjoy. There are plenty of bloggers who are hailed as authorities in their field of expertise.

But plenty is a part of the problem facing bloggers possibly intent on deposing the newspapers. There’s more bloggers than there are newspapers. Far more. So who do you go to for a round up of the news?

Of the millions of feeds, whose do you choose to subscribe to? On what basis do you make the decision to read one citizen journalist’s blog, but not another’s?

Bloggers often write about specialist or niche subjects, rather than a broad range of topics. Would that potentially mean scanning, 100, 200, possibly more, blogs covering topics from the weather, to sports results, to breaking news, in an attempt to keep up to date?

Sure we can aggregate all this information centrally, thanks to our RSS readers for instance, but newspapers already do this. So, back to the question, do I think blogging will bring about the demise of newspapers?

No, I don’t.

The only place the newspapers will go, is where they have already gone, online. Exclusively that is. The print editions will eventually vanish, but the “papers” themselves will live on electronically. They may continue to co-exist uneasily with bloggers, but continue they will.

The end of print newspapers will be unfortunate in a way though. There’s nothing more relaxing than reading a paper over a long breakfast, especially at weekends, or while on holiday.

Besides, sharing the breakfast table with a laptop, or even a news service friendly Kindle isn’t quite my idea of… disconnecting.