WOW, What a GREAT idea! Why didn't I think of that?
Honestly, photojournalists tend to shoot JPEG, because they just want and need to register information. Space, speed, that sometimes matter more than the advantages of RAW, even more when the target media doesn't need 300dpi quality. Take a 40D for example. A photojournalist covering a basketball game, action is going on for over 30 nervewrecking seconds, of the playoffs. You shoot RAW, on those 30s, on the high speed drive mode, it means your buffer will fill up after some 25 shots, and you still have 15 seconds of game you may miss a decisive moment. Shoot JPEG, you may have 90 shots on the buffer. Since this isn't a photo you want to photoshop, you won't do much twitching, it's not for HUGE prints, you just want to get the color temperature right, by all means, there's no reason NOT to shoot JPEG ( as long as you know WHY and you know WHAT you're doing... but again, if you're shooting NBA playoffs, odds are you DO ).
I surelly wouldn't "need" for the small neighborhood magazines I work for shooting food, to shoot in RAW, since they ask me to give them high-res JPEGs. BUT, I shoot in RAW for myself. And convert them into Digital Negatives, also for the sake of my own needs, rather than those of the client.
If you shoot mostly white background, cutout images for online catalogues, that you won't need to do much conversion work afterwards, and you want fast processing to deliver to the client, yeah, shoot JPEG.
But still, I shoot RAW. First, my clients never get the RAW files, meaning I can keep them as negatives, and anytime, prove I shot those photos, as I'm the only one to have the original RAW files. As if size was an issue these days. The problem is that if you shoot first, think later about what you want, you'll eventually kill 3 16Gb cards, regardless of the camera you're using. You'll end up, after a fashion photoshoot, with 6000 photos, to select 6 from those, to send to the magazine. If you compose, think on what you want first, the first thing you'll notice, is that you'll hardly get to 200 photos on every change of clothes... I try to limit to 72. When I shoot food, I shoot even less, I usually take 8 stills to 20 still in a single dish. Because I think first, I select first, I compose before I click, and sometimes, review on the notebook to see if I got it right.
So, all in all... I'm sure any experienced pro photographer will know when to shoot JPEG, when to shoot RAW. In my case, I think the distinct advantages of RAW over JPEG are worth keeping and working with file sizes 3 to 4 times bigger, as converting my RAW files into DNGs. Because, since we're talking files...
In 20 years, I'm pretty sure Adobe will continue it's support to the DNG file format, or will provide us with tools on converting from DNG into a new standard. Since we also have to move our files from old backup formats into newer ones ( from ZIP to CD, from CD into DVD... possibly from DVD into Solid State HDs or BluRay or some other format.... ), not a big deal. Can I be sure Adobe will still support the first RAW CRW Canon format's in 20 years? Will my first photos with a 300D be still readable on the native RAW format, or only the DNG ones will survive?
Sometimes some wild advocate will buzz around some wild idea on his strong opinions about something. Well, either I'm wasting time and disk space that costs less every day of the year.... or I'm now a Big Shot Photographer and I don't realize that