In a web-based world where everything is free and opinions are ubiquitous, how do we save the professional arts writer? Is it an institution worth saving? 

Last Wednesday, team Flying Kite spent the morning "Plotting the Future of Cultural Journalism" at WHYY. The event was presented by the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance, the City's Office of Arts, Culture and the Creative Economy and WHYY. It featured a keynote from Doug McLennan, founder and editor of ArtsJournal.com, in which he detailed the dire state of cultural journalism in the internet era. (Fortunately, he had some solutions, too.)

First, the bleak stuff: Between 2000 and 2008, 50 percent of arts staff writing jobs were eliminated. The areas that tend to suffer most during budget cuts are dance, community arts, choruses and alternative cultures. Then there are the subtle changes in the way criticism operates. 

According to McLennan, readers are more interested in a "consumer reports" style story -- Up or down? Should I spend money on this or not? Sites like Rotten Tomatoes and Trip Advisor aggregate opinions, transforming them into an easily digestible number --you don't even need to read the nuanced individual take anymore. There are far more event previews than event reviews.

Of course, this is a symptom of a larger disease. During the panel discussion that followed the keynote, Philadelphia Inquirer editor Bill Marimow explained that his paper has gone from 535 to 220 reporters in the news room during his tenure. In 2000, newspapers regularly produced 20 percent profit margins (40 percent for Gannett papers). In 2012, the Inquirer lost millions. 

It is in fact a brave new world. The changes are radical. As Chris Satullo, vice president of news and civic dialogue at WHYY put it, "We have to preserve newsrooms not necessarily newspapers." He was guardedly optimistic, arguing that the next five years will finally produce a viable financial way forward for media.

So, what is that way? McLennan discussed numerous models, including a pay wall (which seems to work for the big dogs -- The New York Times, Andrew Sullivan -- but less well for local newspapers; the Boston Globe has only 28,000 subscribers), an NPR-style membership funding model (working well for MinnPost and Crosscut in Seattle) and even straight donations or grant-funding. 

None of these models are perfect. They are more like test runs -- an attempt to figure out what could work going forward. They are also attempts to answer the essential question: How can we maintain the value of professional criticism and reporting when 70 percent of the content online is generated by laypeople?

As a new media publication that relies mainly on freelancers, Flying Kite (and our parent company Issue Media Group) occupies a strange place in the conversation. Yes, we are not offering the full-time arts writing positions that are withering at daily papers and magazines across the country, but then again, as those jobs dry up (and the local arts coverage goes with them), we are providing a platform for arts journalism -- and making the inherent argument that cultural assets are just as important to urban life as a new loft building or startup company.

In recent weeks, we've covered a groundbreaking classical music conductor in Mt. Airy, an innovative high-tech public art project and a graffiti initiative on a Germantown warehouse rehab. On Monday, we sent a writer to the groundbreaking of FringeArts' new home on the Delaware waterfront.

We're doing our part to support and advance the conversation about arts and culture in Philadelphia. We believe that coverage helps breed community. Hopefully, the more insightful arts stories we tell, the more you will read them, providing an argument for even more coverage. It is a volley back and forth between the media and the public -- neither one can drop the ball.

Of course, there is no magic bullet. The 180 attendees at the event are the ones fighting the good fight, but at the end of a morning of discussion, there were no solutions, just ideas. No guarantees, just some creative outliers committed to finding a model that works. It's a start.

LEE STABERT is managing editor of Flying Kite.