Earlier this month, the Online Media Legal Network held a conference titled, “Journalism’s Digital Transition: Unique Legal Challenges and Opportunities.” At the event, Josh Benton, director of the Nieman Journalism Lab, gave a great speech about the history of content aggregation, and how the practice has shaped journalism. Watch the speech:

Clay Shirky published a thoughtful blog post called “The Collapse of Complex Business Models” where he applies the lessons of Joseph Tainter’s 1988 book, The Collapse of Complex Societies to the shifting media industry. Shirky's reflections on the challenges and opportunities that exist in times of collapse pose key questions about how we make structural change in societies, cultures and industries.

Tainter’s essential theory is that complex societies collapse not in spite of their complexity but because of it. Shirky summarizes: “Early on, the marginal value of this complexity is positive—each additional bit of complexity more than pays for itself in improved output—but over time, the law of diminishing returns reduces the marginal value, until it disappears completely. At this point, any additional complexity is pure cost.” For Shirky, this tension is at the heart of many questions about the future of media, and he suggests that paywall advocates are essentially arguing that they need to find ways to make Web users pay up because otherwise, “we will have to stop making content in the costly and complex way we have grown accustomed to making it. And we don’t know how to do that.”

A year ago, we were still building SaveTheNews.org, writing our first major report and holding early meetings with journalism leaders about the future of news and public policy. Our DC meeting included folks from the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism, who gave us a brief snapshot of their 2009 State of the Media report. It was an optimistic presentation, emphasizing the dramatic growth in news readership and the exciting new online news ventures developing all over the country.

This year’s State of the Media report, released yesterday, paints a much different picture. The brief summary is that newsroom cuts and dwindling budgets are still wracking the news industry, and new business models and nonprofit journalism projects are not developing fast enough to fill in the gaps. While the report does not address public policy directly, there are a number of important findings that highlight how bad policies have undermined journalism, and suggest ways new policies could help meet the information needs of communities.

On February 16, SaveTheNews.org and Free Press co-hosted a forum on the future of news at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.

The event featured Robert McChesney and John Nichols, co-founders of Free Press, who have been traveling the nation speaking with communities about the role of government currently and historically in shaping our media system.