Yet the overuse might lead us to bend over backwards and fall into euphemism - calling a grave matter “a little difficult,” for example, as is common, for some reason, in American discourse today. There are crises. History proceeds by convulsions, not only increments - or rather, increments build up into crises, and before one knows it, the landscape has changed, one is living in a different world, and the world before it changed is barely conceivable and certainly unrecoverable. It was a foreign country; they did things differently there.

His website is hereIn the case of the murky future of journalism, it is fair to speak of crisis - crises, actually. The landscape has changed, is changing, will change - radically. Just because the industry is crying wolf does not mean that the wolf is not nearby.  In the story, when the real wolf showed up, no one was ready. 

Four wolves have arrived at the door of American journalism simultaneously while a fifth has already been lurking for some time. One is the precipitous decline in the circulation of newspapers. The second is the decline in advertising revenue, which, combined with the first, has badly damaged the profitability of newspapers. The third, contributing to the first, is the diffusion of attention. The fourth is the more elusive crisis of authority. The fifth, a perennial - so much so as to be perhaps a condition more than a crisis - is journalism’s inability or unwillingness to penetrate the veil of obfuscation behind which power conducts its risky business. ...

It's a lengthy essay, but important. I would encourage you to read all of it.

Here's Gitlin's closer, in which he argues that some type of public model of journalism should emerge, even though the structure of that model isn't yet clear:

What I do know is that journalism is too important to be left to business interests. If there were any doubt as to what newspapers at their best can accomplish for the public good, you need look no further than the British parliamentary scandal.  If there were any doubt that the best American newspaper is worried about the coverage that newsroom shrinkage is preventing, take this headline, from page 3 of the New York Times of May 21st: "Death Row Foes See Newsroom Cuts as Blow"

Leaving journalism to the myopic, inept, greedy, unlucky, and floundering managers of the nation's newspapers to rescue journalism on their own would be like leaving it to the investment wizards at the American International Group (AIG), Citibank, and Goldman Sachs, to create a workable, just global credit system on the strength of their good will, their hard-earned knowledge, and their fidelity to the public good. 

A crisis is a terrible thing to waste, as Rahm Emanuel said. I hope my next talk can be called "Building New Foundations from Garbage".