MIAMI— Hurricane Irma, one of the most devastating storms to hit the state of Florida, revealed an important thing about the future of news: Digital tools enable the legacy press (as a First Amendment institution) to melt while simultaneously empowering citizens and reinventing democracy (but not their business model). 

With a hollowing out of seniority within newsrooms amid the recent U.S. financial crisis, the quality of national discourse, especially on television, has plummeted during the last 10 years. Industry novices, pundits and duopoly politicians appear around-the-clock to maintain the status quo.‬ In other words, there has been a professional decapitation (deforestation) of the national press corps through an unholy convergence of competitiveness theory and technological disruption.

However, the emergence of a modern, nonprofit news industry has roots in the tradition of editorial independence; a time when reporting was not beholden to management, advertising and online popularity. Local communities that were once the source and focus of reporting coverage are actually a potential new landscape of embedded citizenship factories deepening democratization through digital connections.

Citizenship isn’t voyeurism. Reporting isn’t an office job. The corporate concentration of a hierarchial, profit-driven media headquartered in New York City has usurped the modern capacity of citizens trapped in this Matrix to remain impactful. Digital tools give back that capacity. 

Every economic unit is now a media organization. The rise of interactivity as a new medium of exchange enables direct connections between global supply and demand. This modern market cuts out the middle where many business models lived in the 20th Century.

To embrace digital evolution, ‪legacy news organizations must not only reinvent their business models (on a nonprofit basis) but also reimagine their overall role as press. Legacy news networks based in New York City manufacture a virtual reality using current events and a cast of hand-picked reality tv characters chosen from connected circles within an establishment elite. Its function as infotainment ignores public interest, accountability and service. 

Furthermore, in a 21st Century dominated by digital media, American freedoms of speech and press are no longer separate rights. They have converged in practice. To date, social media platforms like Twitter enable self-identified media to create ego-driven echo chambers for preaching to the choir instead of reinventing the institution to empower diverse, local and traditional audiences through measurable social impact. Traditional storytelling appears woefully archaic and insufficient when information and virtual connections are ubiquitous.

As a tool, social media embeds a new type of multidimensional reporting within communities enabling the creation of shared experiences. Distribution is no longer static at scale but becomes global, mobile and interactive. The act of sharing is the new medium of exchange for creating value-laden impact.‬ Experience is local.

‪The 20th Century notion that a free press is the exclusive domain of “journalists” is dead. Reporting tools are everywhere, even if professional ethics are not. Pretending that the world of democracy is still flat won’t change reality. Corporate media is a captured business model dependent on profit and ratings.‬ To claim that only legacy newspapers and cable news networks based in New York City are the true guardians of a free, independent press is a laughable interpretation. The First Amendment contains no such definition.

Thus, the reactionary drumbeat from legacy journalists that a free press is critical to democracy assumes a competitive landscape where reporters once broke actual news in the public interest and everyone was still on the same page. 

Sadly, rampant speculation, duopoly media and public relations disguised as news have become the norm.‬ Veteran journalists should recognize the dismal state of the profession before misrepresenting critical salvos on novice newsrooms and an outdated business model as attacks on a free press. 

The First Amendment as an institution is much stronger than a traditional industry in decline. Until what’s left of the traditional U.S. press escapes from duopoly discourse and a sunken business model, it will continue its slow steady decline into oblivion.

Recent charges of "fake news" stem from New York-based media concentration, shallow editorial judgment, audience estrangement and ratings-driven punditry of novice newsrooms in the early 21st Century. Meanwhile, what's left of our modern, legacy press continues to reinvent itself out of existence with outdated assumptions.

But is there a bright side? Yes. The First Amendment won’t sink along with a tired way of informing the public.‬ Journalism is a worldview, a universal skill set built on trust and credentials. The modern newsroom is not just a place somewhere in space. It's a social network of shared democratic values among individuals serving in a multitude of economic roles.