There's a very specific hierarchy in any newspaper. Essentially it's this: The publisher is boss. If he or she doesn't like it, then it changes. For a while now, we've also been relying on this power to get journalism out of this mess. This obviously hasn't amounted to much.

It's time to admit that the responsibility of saving the media really lies in every journalists' hands. Gina Chen at Save the Media blog has a post entreating journalists to step up to the plate. Most of us have been fully happy with waiting until our company gets around to asking us if we want to learn anything new. But a large problem seems to be that companies aren't there yet. They don't have the funds to train all employees, nor the psychic powers to know which ones are willing to train for new media jobs. To solve these problems, Chen points out steps that every journalist can take to help save the media:

• Educate yourself: Only you have the power to jump-start your training in online journalism. It can be a simple as playing around with your newspaper's video camera (with permission of course) to starting your own blog, just to get a feel for the medium.


• Reach out to others: There's likely to be someone at your paper with the knowledge to give you some unofficial training. It's all about experiencing something new so you can be that much more prepared to blow your editors away with an innovative suggestion.


• Read, read, read: There are hundreds of blogs out there with wonderful tips on journalism and even more on the basics of navigating the online world. See my blogroll for some of my favorites. You can use those to find others and so on.

As Chen writes at the end of her post: "Be part of the solution."