As I said back in the first chapter, I’m jealous of my students. I wish I could be their age, starting out when the slate is so blank, when the possibilities are so wide open. They, not my generation, will be among the entrepreneurs who invent the news organizations of the future that will welcome us as co-creators of journalism.
The kind of media environment we need, and, ultimately, the kind a democratic society needs to make informed decisions, won’t come easily. The decisions that will make the new journalism possible lie not only with those who try to practice it, or even with their audience—the new era will require changes to the legal, social and economic environment. We’ll look some of them in the following chapters.