It's the group advertisers care most about. In significant numbers Americans are shunning the news media. Just market forces at work and like buggy-whip makers the people who work in the news business are just going to have to adapt to the future, find new jobs. That might be a reasonable reaction to most market pressures but the news media are simply too important to the success of our form of government to be allowed to fail under the pressures of the market or anything else. Journalism may not be popular but it is absolutely essential.
News is the oxygen of a self-governing society.
My answer to that question is civic journalism. Civic journalism is a label for an approach to journalism I believe to be a reasonable solution to the problem. It is an effort to turn away from the arrogance, the insularity, the self-promotion and, yes, the ethical failures that have corrupted many journalists. Public affairs, public life, civic engagement, call it what you will, has come to mean government officials and politicians talking to journalists. An insiders game and the public has been left out of that conversation.