First of all, Wilhelm’s focus on access to the media challenges everything I’m mulling over. He writes that low-income communities are victims of technology disenfranchisement, and he’s right.

“Perhaps the highest-order digital literacy is for citizens to be media producers, not just passive consumers, to use available outlets to voice their hopes and concerns, to be citizen-producers. For this to happen, widespread access to digital media is critical as well as the training and mentoring to cultivate young people’s talents. …Significant digital divides exist in access and training, particularly acute in high-poverty and rural communities.”

The problem of digital disenfranchisement could bring down any journalistic effort aimed at democratically bringing a larger social news conversation to the public; such a conversation’s legitimacy is brought into question when a whole segment of the population lacks access.

On the other hand, Wilhelm looks to Congress and the government to solve the problems he sees in digital divides and information. He says:

“Democratic, legitimate Digital Nations in the twenty-first century will use the potential of networked intelligence and the promise of decentralization as the primary arterials for human empowerment and liberation.”

I agree. However, he continues:

“Action is needed from the US Congress to establish a fund to address the key challenges of achieving a Digital Nation. The fund could be derived from various sources, and the strategy for how best to move legislation in support of a Digital Nation trust fund will depend on political exigencies.”

News organizations and journalists could achieve the ends Wilhelm sees achieved by the government, as long as a profit model can be found. Corporations certainly move faster than Congress, and as long as we’re viewing journalism as a democratic act central to the process of governing, it might as well also take on part of the challenges of achieving a Digital Nation. Isn’t the following something journalism could help achieve?

“In the end, a Digital Nation must be a reflection of a democratic society having harness the best technology can offer in pursuit of the well-being and edification of its people. The interactive, asynchronous, and portable attributes of the new technologies offer a compelling invitation to reform and revamp outwork institutions and organizations, creating avenues for deeper participation and accountability…. Navigating this society will require that people be motivated and empowered to invent their own futures, buoyed by a new social contract in which rampant inequalities sown by the acquisitive spirit are tempered by the tender embrace of liberty, equality, and solidarity.”