Opening shot.(public-service journalism)(Brief article)

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Embattled automakers need lithium for the batteries that will power the next generation of electric cars. Bolivia has half the world's known supply of lithium, buried beneath massive salt flats (above). But questions of how to get it without despoiling this pristine environment and how to ensure that Bolivians are justly compensated have thus far snarled a simple matter of supply and demand that has the potential to transform the economy of one of the poorest nations in South America. Similarly, America's mainstream press, for all its many failings, remains the primary producer of the kind of public-service journalism that is hard (and expensive) to do and essential to a healthy republic. Despite all the slings and arrows hurled at the press, demand for quality journalism remains strong, and may actually be getting stronger as citizens search for it in a vast and fragmented media. But the old systems of support and delivery are dissolving, and the effort to build new ones--to transform journalism--involves difficult questions and tradeoffs, like those Bolivia faces with its lithium. Starting on page 22, we explore some of the more ambitious experiments under way; we asked the people leading those experiments to peer five years down the road and tell us how the transformation looks from the other side. The future, they tell us, is crowd-sourced, collaborative, and reliant on a range of funding streams. We hope you enjoy it.

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