Google CEO Eric Schmidt, left, and News Corp Chairman Rupert Murdoch. (AP)

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For a century and more, newspapers made money hand over fist. Then came the Internet.

Now, newspapers are dying. And news giant Rupert Murdoch is getting mad. He’s ready to fight.

Murdoch’s target is the biggest kid on the Internet block: Google. The News Corp chief says Google has essentially been stealing the news from companies like his and giving it away for free. It’s got to stop, he says.

Is Murdoch just blowing smoke?

This hour, On Point: We’ll hear from Jeff Jarvis, Michael Wolf, and Steven Brill — plus Google CEO Eric Schmidt — on Google versus Murdoch.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Jeff Jarvis, associate professor and director of the Interactive Program at the City University of New York School of Journalism. His most recent book is “What Would Google Do?” He writes a column on new media for The Guardian and blogs at Buzzmachine.

Michael Wolff, contributing editor at Vanity Fair and founder of the news aggregator Newser.com. He’s author of “The Man Who Owns the News: Inside the Secret World of Rupert Murdoch.”

Steven Brill, media entrepreneur, founder of CourtTV, American Lawyer magazine, and most recently co-founder of Journalism Online, a company whose mission is to help news publishers make the transition to a paid-content model on the Internet.

Final editions of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer at First & Pike News in downtown Seattle on Tuesday, March 17, 2009. The Tuesday edition ended a heritage stretching back nearly 146 years, when the Seattle Gazette, the P-I's predecessor, began publishing in December 1863. (AP)

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American newspapers are going down fast now. Denver and Seattle are just the latest cities to lose a paper. More presses, almost everyone says, are sure to be shuttered. Maybe many more.

At this week’s South by Southwest Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas, tech thinker Steven Johnson made the “don’t worry, be happy” case. The transition may be rough, he says, but a new “news ecosystem” will emerge on the web, richer than what we’ve known.

Will it? This hour, On Point: Steven Johnson, and New York Times media maven David Carr, on the “news ecosystem” beyond newspapers.

You can join the conversation. If your newspaper goes, how will you get your news? Will a new ecosystem thick with bloggers fill the breach? Could it be better? Tell us what you think.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Steven Johnson joins us from New York. A tech entrepreneur and best-selling author, he co-founded the pioneering online magazine FEED in 1995 and the community site Plastic in 2001. His latest venture is the hyperlocal news site outside.in. In Austin on Friday, at the big South by Southwest Interactive Festival, his speech “Old Growth Media and the Future of News” got a lot of attention. His latest book is “The Invention of Air: A Story of Science, Faith, Revolution, and the Birth of America.”

Joining us from Austin is David Carr, columnist for The New York Times covering media, business, and pop culture. He’s currently reporting from the South by Southwest Festival. You can keep up with him at the Times’ ArtsBeat blog.

And from Seattle, we’re joined by Monica Guzman, a reporter at SeattlePI.com covering the culture of technology and the main writer of The Big Blog. She was the first online reporter for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which published its last print edition this week.

Newspapers are sold on Jan. 21, 2009, in the Studio City area of Los Angeles. (AP)

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After years in trouble, American newspapers are finally up against the wall.

Advertising, vanished. Profits, gone. Losses, mounting very rapidly. Around the country, newsrooms are being hollowed out, papers are shrinking, some are letting go of daily publication. Some are going away.

So, what if? What if your local newspaper just disappeared? In a world of red ink, bankruptcies, layoffs and cutbacks, it’s possible. So, what then?

This hour, On Point: Newspapers going down — and radical steps for radical times in the news business.

You can join the conversation. Do you see a future for the newspaper as we know it? And what steps up if newspapers go down?

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Joining us from New York is Jay Rosen, professor of journalism at New York University and author of the blog PressThink, where he writes about the future of the press. He’s also author of the book “What Are Journalists For?”

Also joining us from New York is David Folkenflik, media reporter for NPR. He’s just completed a two-part series on the future of newspapers. Before he joined NPR in 2004, he spent more than a decade at The Baltimore Sun.

And joining us from San Diego is Andrew Donohue, co-executive editor of the non-profit investigative news site, Voice of San Diego.

This week, Leonard Downie Jr., the executive editor of The Washington Post, announced he’s stepping down after 17 years at the helm.

Forty-four years total at the newspaper, where he arrived as a summer intern in 1964.

Many of the stories he’s had a hand in are defining: Watergate. Secret CIA prisons. Walter Reed. The Post has won 25 Pulitzers with Downie in charge — six this year.

But he’s not without some regrets. And he’s leaving at an uncertain time for newspapers — and for the news.

This hour, On Point: Washington Post editor Leonard Downie Jr.

- Guest host, Jane Clayson

Guest:

Leonard Downie Jr., executive editor of The Washington Post.