As Dave Winer pointed out in a recent blog post about Changing The Way We Do News, the media is in severe trouble and it is likely that it will collapse before it reinvents itself and finds a new model. Recent reports suggest that even the New York Times, that most venerable of newspapers, is in dire straits. It is running out of cash and perhaps more seriously just lost Vivian Schiller, their head of NYT.com, to be CEO of NPR.
Winer suggests that the role of media in mediating the relationship between the powerful and the populace will not be replaced by bloggers, who are just becoming another branch of the old style media, but by unpaid citizen journalists who will assume part-time roles as volunteer journalists on behalf of the citizens, much like they do jury duty today.
Frankly that seems a little far-fetched to me. When you consider the fact that the average citizen has to be pressed into this type of service with the threat of arrest hanging over their heads, and still fail to show, well, it seems unlikely.
The role of mediator is a critical one, and someone has to take up the mantle. Ideally, as Winer suggests, this will be the citizens rather than the appointed/anointed few. There are ways that this can happen without huge disruption, and that is to let the people interview the people in power.
Mediation and reporting is about asking the right questions and getting answers. We don't need journalists to mediate if we can have direct access to ask those questions. While the media was avoiding asking questions about the war in Iraq beause they were afraid of losing access, the people would have been asking the pertinent questions: what is our exit strategy? why is it costing so much? etc.
We have the ability to let communities ask questions of the people in power. They can vote on what questions are most critical to get answered and be self-moderating. This will also allow the people in power to talk directly to the communities without a media filter. Politics and the media can become local, even on a national scale.
