So, what’s missing?
As we move into the next generation of news and trustworthy information, what tools, techniques and business models need to be invented or perfected? What attitudes need to change in the general public? The list is too long for one book. But here are some of the most important “next steps” I can name right now:
- Create community-based networks of trust, using reputation as an essential component.
- Improve the tools of discovery and context, via aggregation and curation.
- Make the topic the primary focus of reporting, with dynamic “articles” that advance understanding through successive iterations as new information becomes available.
- Find and catalog the best ideas, techniques and tools, and then connect them with people who can bring them to a wider public.
- Get policy right on copyright and broadband. Eliminate subsidies, direct and indirect, that favor one type of media business over another.
- Develop payment systems that reward creators in all parts of the new media ecosystem.
- Make critical thinking and media literacy part of education’s core curriculum.
- Do away with almost all journalism prizes, and bring the ones we want to keep into the 21st century.
- Work toward a national consensus on identity and accountability that encourages people to stand behind their words and to cut each other slack for past foolish acts and remarks.
- Continue the conversations.
Let me expand on some of these.