The roil can be seen in the hardware typical inhabitants of a university lounge carry in their back packs and the pockets of their cargo pants these days. It may include a laptop more powerful than the enormous 7000 series IBM mainframes of just a decade or so ago. The laptop will likely be linked to Internet via a wireless high-speed broadband router. A hand-held device plays digital music to drown out the clamor coming from the nearby Starbucks coffee franchise. A cell with e-mail and color imaging capacity also is at hand. Engineering students find room on their overstuffed study chairs for a high-end calculator.

Conceptual turbulence surfaces in the ambiguity of where news resides in an increasingly broad spectrum of media content. Undergraduates majoring in journalism will tell you they get their news from Jon Stewart’s satire show on “Comedy Central,” rather than the New York Times. The Washington Post reported that an Annenberg Public Policy Center study found viewers of Stewart’s "Daily Show" are more knowledgeable about current events than those viewing other comedy shows, and score at rates rivaling newspaper readers and network news viewers. If mainstream mass media are continually rocked by scandals and credibility gaffes while comedy show hosts ask the kind of blunt, penetrating questions once reserved for the press, why not?