Television news is dead. Duh. There are a few good pure newspapers, but declining readership is making them less relevant. The internet? Sky's the limit. Always has been. But the internet just isn't accessible in the real world as the first two forms of news, which is why the influence it wields is still much weaker.
Solution? Well, look at the Wikimedia corporation. They're a privately owned (charitable!) corporation that provides information to users to free, in part by user generated content, and their sites are extremely popular. I understand they require donations to be sustainable. But aren't they already halfway there? Lots of internet sites are constantly experimenting how to keep their product as widely available as possible, without resorting to more normal methods of sponsorship or becoming a publicly owned company (with obviously disastrous consequences). Why can't we adapt this to making honest-to-god big editorial-style online newspapers that reach for the largest possible audience? Hell, maybe even a streaming video news service? Let's directly compete with the big boys!
What we want is for the average American to trust an internet site to get them breaking news instead of a network (which the proliferation of browsing on phones has now made possible). We want the average American to go to internet sites to read stories that traditional news outlets try to sweep under the rug. To value an independent site's opinion more than the news channel that likes to fellate its sponsors on live TV. This means we NEED name recognition. If that means we have to have a fewer number of influential sites than a large number of smaller, marginal sites, then so be it. We may have to make internet news less democratic if we want to make American news in general more democratic, like it or not. Journalistic integrity can be preserved so long as we avoid buyouts by large conglomerates, as long as we preserve a business model that relies upon readers instead of sponsors.
And again, I'm fairly ignorant if anything is actually being done along these lines, to feel free to make me look silly.
