The point that Chomsky made about selling audiences to advertisers (and the whole explanation of propaganda) is interesting to me. Since print advertising and digital advertising have become significantly less valuable sources of income for news organizations, I think there’s the potential for a significant shift toward audience-funded journalism. The New York Times, for example, has been successful with this recently and has major plans to expand digital subscriptions.

But on the other hand, the argument about institutions relying on one another in a closed system is a bit troubling. I’m not sure how one would go about addressing that, and it definitely has caused problems (such as newspapers getting things wrong due to over-reliance on government sources). Perhaps audience-funded journalism would lead to journalism that’s on the audience’s side. But that remains to be seen.