That's the subject of Mark Glaser's report yesterday in Online Journalism Review. Read reactions to Yahoo! New's decision to offer original reporting. Here's my own from Glaser's story:

Media consultant Vin Crosbie, president of Digital Deliverance, said it's true that Yahoo doesn't have a news culture now, but that doesn't mean the company can't build one. He's bullish on Yahoo's chances to innovate online, and says Big Media has only itself to blame for moving slowly on the Net.

"Yahoo has an advantage over the legacy companies here," Crosbie said. "It doesn't have a legacy, it can start from scratch by utilizing the new medium the way it should be, which has been a challenge for the legacy companies because most of what they do is shovelware. It's interesting that Yahoo is doing original content when out of 1,400 newspaper sites, there are what, 15 that are doing original content? To say, 'How can Yahoo do original content?' begs the question of why 95% of the media companies out there haven't done original content [online]."