the Tipping Point

There's an Albert Einstein quote I feel particularly affectionate for:

"We cannot solve problems with the same way of thinking we used when we created them."

Public media is facing a problem. The necessity of change is dawning on everyone involved. How we deal with change is personal.

The problem is this: local public media was a trusted, reliable information source for a generation. In a world where the way we consume information has totally changed, how do we pass on the tradition?

Our public radio travails connected us to Michael Stoll, journalism professor at San Jose State and brains behind the Public Press. The Public Press is a reaction to newsroom layoffs and their unholy consequence: front-page stories about Britney Spears' buzz-cutting incident. If successful, it will be the first ever public newspaper--in print--in the world-ever. After putting my little Scion up to San Francisco for a volunteer meeting, I daresay they might do it.

The Public Press is still in the fetal stage. They embraced two principles early-on: collaborative production to replace the hierarchical order of command, and community engagement.

Sounds like a mouthful, right? It's pretty simple. They both mean the same thing: the era of the audience is over. If we hope to save our undertaking from failure we must harness the power of the crowd. If we don't, we will be replaced by more successful organizations that did.

Community engagement and collaborative production are sisters. They are the external and internal strategies for success. Doesn't matter if you work at a small business or a huge corporation: if you're a nonprofit organization or a government institution.

Personal change is scary. Change on an enterprise level is still more terrifying. It doesn't matter--we've already tasted the power that the phenomenon known as Web 2.0 has to offer. We have seen how it can transform our information flow, our conversation, and our democracy.

Public radio, without a doubt, has a place in the lives of future generations. It has to change. It may have a new face, or go by a different name, but if we honor the principles of the community that we have learned so far, we will succeed--and go on to encounter many more problems in the future.