My head is spinning from trying to figure out what is happening in the world of journalism and where it is all going to lead. No doubt, journalism is in crisis in the United States. Newspaper hardcopy circulation and readership continue to decline. Mainstream media reporting staffs, in many instances, have been dramatically reduced to cut expenses and improve profits. Ownership of mainstream media continues to consolidate, leading to fewer and fewer corporations owning more and more of media outlets. And, as the Media Giraffe Project website says, "less and less airtime is devoted to stories about politics and public policy."

This is not good for a republic, and I am not the only one who feels that way. The Media Giraffe Project, which is headquartered at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, "responds to growing public concern that U.S. media are increasingly less able to equip citizens with knowledge they need to demand accountability in government. This threatens effective democracy and communities."

"Citizen journalists" are, to some degree, filling the gap with their news, and especially local news, blogs. They report on community events and issues that the local mainstream media ignore. There is a problem with this in that bloggers are usually, by definition, biased and insert their opinion into their articles. There is the potential of the balance of other bloggers with different views also reporting on the same events. It is sort of reminiscent of the first "newspapers" in America which took sides. There was a lot of pamphleteering during those times. One politician would publish his position on an issue in pamphlet form and a few days later an opposition pamphlet would roll off the presses.

There are those who might say, "Well, what's the difference between that and the slanted news presented by the corporate mainstream media every day now?" I have to admit, I get the same feeling, especially when I view the Fox News channel. CNN is also working in a lot of opinionated reporting now, also.

Where is it all going? Digital? No more hardcopy newspapers? More people relying on the internet and podcasting for their news? Censorship, as the Federal Communication's Commission circumvents the First Amendment by banning what it determines is "indecent" or "too violent?" More dependency on "citizen journalists" who maintain their individual websites and/or blogs? The abandonment of commercial broadcast networks of their evening newscasts as audiences shrink to levels that advertising on the networks becomes too small to support the expense of a world-wide news organization? 24-hour local news cables that replace the local newscasts on the commercial broadcasting stations?

There is one thing for sure, journalism is changing and will continue to change. The big question is whether that change is going to better inform citizens so that they can intelligently be a part of our participatory democracy?