With ad revenues down, there are fewer journalists and they have more to do, Buckman said. "You don't have time to do your long-form story," she said.

Panelst Krishna Bharat, who holds the title of distinguished researcher at Google, objected. Wikipedia, for example, has offered a long, growing account of the Haiti earthquake disaster.  "The industry could learn a lot from Wikipedia," he said.

Buckman, though questioned whether Wikipedia is journalism and lamented a lack of reporters available to write stories.

Masnick said long-form stories do not necessarily need to be written by a single reporter and that more people besides journalists are participating in the story-telling process. "I would argue that there's probably a billion more things being told today," than previously, he said.  Buckman countered that standards-based journalism is "something important."