A friend of mine posted this link, "Why the internet will fail," as his g-chat status, and I got a good long laugh out of it... then I got a good long think out of it. Three Word Chant posted this article from Newsweek in 1995. When you parse the issues that Newsweek brought up, they were serious flaws in the internet that simply had not been solved at the time. Among the issues raised are ineffective search, lack of secure money transfers, and lack of human contact. Each of these problems have been solved by Google, Paypal, and social media sites.
Newsweek saw the present much to clearly and saw the future much too dimly. The people in journalism who see the present decline in journalism as apocalyptic, see the world in much the same way. The smart ones will see the problems as they are (journalists won't be able to make money, commodity news won't be produced, and readers won't know who to trust), but search for solutions...
I certainly don't claim to know how all of this is going to shake out, but I have more faith in the creativity and perseverance of humanity than to think that these are insurmountable.
Federated Media is a site that is tackling the first issue: journalists and money. They handle the advertising for some of the largest sites on the web, including News 2.0 sites.
Metblogs (a federated client) is providing local news in over 50 cities around the world. They use 10 to 20 volunteer contributors in each city to provide an interesting alternative slant on issues that only pertain to that city. Even Pittsburgh made the list!
Who do you trust? That is a tougher question, and one that is constantly evolving. Is it primarily based on how many other people read it, credentials of the author, diligence of citations, or the fact that they agree with what you already think? I am very curious what new research, and new models will come out in the future.
So, fret not... The internet is not going to limit the information that people have access to... it is increasing it at an accelerating rate. The problems we see are solvable, and the people working on them are SMART(er than me).
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