Dan Gillmor is right to knock the press in its coverage of the housing bubble. It didn’t do its job. But I thought we were in the age of the crowd having more information than the experts? In the age of news that bubbles up from the conversation where knowledge of something as disastrous as a oncoming financial collapse of the country would umm… be somewhat noticeable.

Beat up on the press all you want Dan. They are an easy punching bag in an age where over 60% of the public have lost confidence in them.

While I am sure we can find voices in the blogosphere that were warning us to impending troubles, as we probably can in the press, it didn’t get surfaced to wide enough audience.

The media failed certainly. And so did We the Media fail.

And it is something that must be confronted.

I am a big trumpeter of social media and how it can empower each of us to connect in ways that were impossible just a short while ago. I’m planning to share some great examples here in later posts. But as you say Dan, there’s plenty of blame to go around in this mess.

As Dave Rogers recently pointed out many tend to look to technological solutions to problems when what they are really dealing with is something different. We prescribe solutions way before we even understand the problem.

And hard enough, sometimes understanding the problem involves a hard look in our own mirrors.