I think journalism needs journalists. I don't mean journalists working in the way we've worked up to now; I mean a group of people who are information miners, crafters and publishers who are able to encourage people to get involved in the news-creation process and help them organise themselves. News cadres.
I wondered how much it would cost society to have this group of people.
Here are some back-of-the-envelope calculations:
There are around 38,000 members of the NUJ.
The average annual salary of journalists in NUJ-recognised workplaces in 2005 was £37,000. Let's be generous and say £38,000.
That's a total cost of £1,444,000,000 a year.
So what would people have to pay in order to fund that? Well, there are around 11 million newspaper readers in the UK.
So that's £131.27 per reader per year. Or 36p a day.
Which I think must be in the ballpark of being the average cover price of a daily newspaper in the UK.
Which means that - as thing stand - the public are paying enough to cover the salaries of UK journalists.
So, given that, could a pay-what-you-like model be a possible model for any of those 38,000 journalists looking to start something new?