Is it that the
locks are broken, or is it that
everyone has a key?
Does it matter? We
no longer have control of our information.
We don't even know what to call journalism anymore, or what exactly the job entails in this new reality. We don't even know where the industry is headed or what will the media companies will look like in 5 years. We know that some will survive and some will fail, but what form will the surviviors take and what their business model will be is a mystery whose answer we'll discover in the future. There will be media outlets providing audiences with information, but the logistics have not been determined yet. If everyone can write their mind, how do we sort out the signal from the noise?
If everything is "free" what is the motivator to create work of quality? Ego and peer recognition will get some people pretty far, but if it doesn't make dollars it doesn't make sense in the long run. Accolades can only get you so far. Media must (and will) become a viable business again before our information society can stabilize.
This site is actually a damn good example of how one can create quality from the commons. Peer review is always a good way to distill the good stuff out, but the danger there is that popular shallow news will always win out over unpopular in-depth news (just look at teh scene today).