I’m not even going to rip Alterman’s nostalgia, or mythology, for a national dialog defined by The New York Times, or the implication that The Huffington Post is ultimately inferior to a real newspaper because it lacks sports and book sections.

Those may be windows into the author’s heart, and there’s nothing wrong with that. He also quoted The Simpsons.

Yes, I find today’s diversity of media experiences, expectations and inclinations more compelling than the preferences of any one individual, even one who writes for The New Yorker, loves The New York Times and can’t fathom a national dialog without it. I can, but Alterman (and The Simpsons) got the big story right: the future of high-priced institutional journalism as practiced or preached for the past half century by enormously profitable U.S. newspaper companies, like The Times, is undoubtedly dimmer than its past, at least in the near-term. The monolithic institutions that crafted, packaged and delivered to our doorsteps the first rough-draft of multiple genocides, the planet’s deadliest wars ever, depopulating hunger, suburbanization, urban decay, racial and ethnic animosities and atrocities, and expanding economic inequities between rich and poor are themselves in decline.

But the world is changing. It’s hard for me to think about journalism or my narrative strictly in terms of U.S. companies, national interest and national dialog – the We Media news network is at once global, hyperlocal and borderless.

I’m optimistic that the world of We Media will be better-informed than the world of THE media. I hope new institutions or networks of institutions and individuals will fill the void. Since 9/11 the U.S. online audience for The Guardian, a left-leaning “serious” newspaper from London, has exploded and is now a competitor to The Times for online audiences and influence. So, too, is The Huffington Post. Others will follow.

Our national, global or local consciousness may be clouded by the confusion of the crowd, or informed by its wisdom AND by big but somewhat less profitable institutions. We still don’t know. The emergence of the We Media culture has only just begun. Maybe I’ll write a We Media narrative for The New Yorker. If I do, I hope I can get as much right as Alterman got in his story of The Media.