Not so long ago, some Western governments and private donors decided that investing in the media was a good way to support the development of democracy in other countries. Over the years, media development has become a vast enterprise, responsible for hundreds of millions of dollars of investment every year.

The paradigm was straightforward enough: provide training, equipment, and management support to foreign publishers and broadcasters to improve their journalism and, in the process, spur political and economic progress.

But that paradigm no longer meets the demands of today’s media environment.

To start with, the U.S. journalism industry is facing significant business challenges, making it difficult to offer as a template to other countries. But even if the problems associated with revenue and audience fragmentation were solved tomorrow, the media development community would still face a host of urgent new questions: How do you integrate new communications technologies, such as cell phone and Internet platforms, into a development model? How do you expand your vision to parts of the world that have been “media dark” (or where government or private monopolies limit speech)? How do you coordinate efforts from multiple actors with differing approaches and agendas?