I love any excuse to talk about politics and journalism. Last night I attended a panel discussion about how to be a political reporter put on by the MU chapter of Society of Professional Journalists. I went along to hear what the four statehouse reporters in attendance had to say (plus there was a chance of Indian food at the end.)

The students' questions eventually went to how to save newspapers. This is an issue that holds a lot of importance for statehouse reporters. As a budget saving measure, papers are shutting their capitol bureaus and many political reporters are worried about who is going to cover public policy. The American Journalism Review's 2009 count of statehouse reporters found a decrease from 524 reporters in 2003 to 355 in 2009, a more than 30 percent drop. In all 44 states lost a political reporter.

Springfield News-Leader statehouse reporter Chad Livengood says the paper now has a third of the reporters of three years ago and his job has extended to include education and a host of other beats.

His way to make money with news? Put most stories behind a pay-wall.

MU professor and 1120/KMOX Capitol Correspondent Phill Brooks asked how many audience members had read the news that day versus how many had paid for it. Only one person had paid.

Brooks then asked a similar question: of those who had read news online, who could name an ad they saw? Same result, which Brooks said was surprising. He had asked the same question to lecture halls of 300 people and had only one person raise their hand.

"This industry is committing suicide," he says.

Brooks says the industry is creating a generation of people who will not pay for news and who think they have the right to information gathered from reliable sources without footing the bill. And the tradition ad based model isn't working to support it.

This exchange made me remember an essay I had read on the Online Journalism Review blog this week. It talked about the 'bottled water' method of getting people to pay for news.

"Bottled water proves that the American public will pay for a product that they used to contentedly get for free," writes University of Massachusetts-Amherst faculty member Brian McDermott.

McDermott's perspective is very interesting. Take a look at it here.