In the fall of 2008, when the markets went into free fall, I was working at Forbes and getting a master’s at Columbia. While everyone suffered that year, the ‘legacy’ media had it particularly bad. Newspapers went out of business, and cubicles around mine emptied. My friends asked: why are you entering journalism now? I answered: “Journalists, I believe, are most important at times like these, when the nature of public debate itself comes under question or into flux. Society—and journalism—will be transformed, and the only way to influence the outcome is to participate in the transformation.”