I completely agree that we have to rethink all of our preconceptions, all of our traditions, and rebuild & redesign what we call journalism to truly serve the needs of a public that is generally far more sophisticated than we give them credit for. But in all of the future-of journalism talk, I see very little discussion of just how to do that. One model is the emerging “field” (if you can call it that) of design thinking, as practiced by firms like IDEO and at Stanford’s design school. Central to design thinking is the act of “needfinding,” which should be an urgent priority for all who care to play a role in bringing needed change to journalism.

It’s maybe paradoxical that the digital age has not led to a broadening of news sources or perspectives in journalism. In fact, it may be the opposite. Out of fear and the sheer busy-ness of attending to blogs, tweets, videos, photos, audio, etc. journalists have neglected the important and interesting work of journalism — sensemaking, storytelling, writing, composition, design, empathy, investigation – in favor of feed-the-beast, multiplatform freneticism.

We need to deploy people into our communities (geographical and otherwise) to discover what information it is that people need (not say they want, as we would in focus groups, but need) and then build our new models and strategies from the insights we generate in the process.