In the old media world, with its top-down monopolistic configuration, the problems were there to be solved by a relatively few people operating in a rigid environment. Most of those challenges are pretty much the same: It’s a constant struggle to keep the public’s information needs at the center of our thinking. It’s unclear how we will pay for high-quality journalism. Those doing journalism (or in any way serving the public’s information needs) must be held accountable.

But if the problems remain identical, they now rest in the hands of multitudes. For good and for ill, the old challenges are newly distributed throughout the population, and the solutions — if and when they come — will come from the many rather than the few. It’s a more unsettling prospect than the familiar world of controlling monopolies and rigidly fixed patterns. It is also, in my view, a more promising one.

via MediaShift . J-Schools Shift from Learning Labs to Major Media Players | PBS.

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