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Today, most American journalism relies heavily on the informational model, which emphasizes describing events and issues from a seemingly neutral stance. For example, front-page stories in newspapers strive for this detachment, confining obvious opinions to the editorial pages.

However, alternative models have emerged to challenge this approach. The alternatives include the public and citizen (or “participatory”) journalism movements, whereby citizens more actively participate in the news process, and fake news forms, exemplified by TV shows like The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report and by publications like the Onion, which satirize the limitations of mainstream news at the same time they provide often original, if idiosyncratic, news and analysis. These newer models generate lively discussion among observers today about what constitutes news, what’s wrong with it, and how news might be produced to better serve democracy.