Adrift in an ocean of complexity

We seem to have drifted into lives that are submerged in the ever-more-difficult tasks of earning a living, paying our bills, and struggling with the complexities of modern life. The important work of being informed about public issues has been crowded out of our lives at the very time that big money has found a way to insinuate itself into nearly every cavity of government.

Watching the effort at health care reform unfold in Washington, for example, we are left with the impression that we the people are no match for industry lobbyists. Talk of citizenship has come to feel old-fashioned, as retro as a Norman Rockwell illustration. Yet it is citizenship that elevates us as a people above the trough of mere consumerism. It gives us standing as agents of our own political and economic destinies and puts us at eye-level with millionaire senators and corporate chieftains.

Clearly something has gone wrong. We have fallen out of the habit of citizenship. Juliet Schor, the sociologist, captured a dimension of the problem in the titles of her books, “The Overworked American’’ and “The Overspent American.’’ We have become too busy and distracted for citizenship.

But a problem of individuals has now morphed into the problem of a nation, as all of this working and spending has shaped a view of the world that has become principally market-driven. As Michael Sandel, the political philosopher, puts it, we have gone from being a free-market economy to being a free-market society. The difference is profound. In a free-market society, the economic transaction is the defining relationship among people, and market forces replace deeper values centered on fairness and justice.

In a market society, we outsource that which we don’t have the time or inclination to do ourselves. In a sense we have outsourced our responsibilities as citizens to experts, politicians, and industry insiders.

These are matters that touch on the debate over the future of journalism. Why? Consider the work that is at the core of journalism or as a wise person once put the question, “What exactly is the problem that journalism is trying to solve?’’ We know the problem that medicine is trying to solve is illness. The problem that journalism is trying to solve is how to provide people with the information they need for self-government, for citizenship.

The problem has been made more complex by the Internet, which has opened enormous opportunities for debate and deliberation, important elements of citizenship, even as it has eroded the financial underpinnings of the professional press. In journalism today, we are experiencing a market failure - there is a public demand for quality journalism and a clear need for it, but the market has not found a way yet to support it online. Journalism is in a place that the music industry found itself with a popular product that is easily digitized and distributed for free.

In a recent study, “The Reconstruction of American Journalism,’’ journalists Len Downie and Michael Schudson open a door to a public subsidy for journalism. A model might be the BBC, which is supported by a tax on television sales. It is a bold suggestion, for sure, but with the stakes this high, it is worth consideration.

Journalism is one of the tools necessary for citizenship. Whatever the source - a newspaper, television, or their digital surrogate, the Internet - citizens need trustworthy information to participate in their own governance. Whether help for the industry rests with some public financial support, it is clear that we as a nation have a stake in the flow of public affairs and accountability journalism.

As a study commission of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation has put it, journalism “is as vital to the healthy functioning of communities as clean air, safe streets, good schools, and public health.’’ Or, in the words of Sandel: “The newspaper is perhaps the most important instrument of civic education, because that is the way citizens learn what’s at stake.’’

Lou Ureneck, a guest columnist, is chairman of the Journalism Department at Boston University.