Long-term if we want a more functional civic society, make a course in basic journalism a requirement in high school and college.

A simple idea, but this is a hangup in the education world, where journalism education is often run by journalists, or by academics who need to maintain good relations with journalists. 

Pretty sure they don't want the masses to know how to do what they do. But with the advent of the web, when publishing became almost free, the education system should have adjusted and started teaching journalism far more broadly. A society that was fully excited about technology would have. And we might have headed off a lot of the crises we're dealing with now.

I tweeted the message at the top of this post, cc'd to future-of-journalism people I know in academia. I'm not trying to embarrass anyone, but I think this needs to get on the agenda, and I don't see how anyone but a blogger is going to do that.

Of course blogging is interested in having lots of people understand journalism. It's on the path to fully developed blogging, not just from a technological standpoint but from a human standpoint.

Another way to look at it. We have new incredibly powerful tools for journalism, and have very little or no idea how to use them, or what they are capable of, and what they do for (and to) journalism.