Great points. But newspapers have value over op-eds and blogs because they are peer-reviewed and bullshit filtered, yet the model is still dying. Granted academ

Great points. But newspapers have value over op-eds and blogs because they are peer-reviewed and bullshit filtered, yet the model is still dying. Granted academia is somewhat different because so much more weight is put into credibility. But can't there be an alternative? I could see maybe a combination of collaborative filtering with something like the PageRank algorithm applied to the citation graph as an alternative to peer-review. It might not be quite as effective, but it would certainly provide a lot of benefits. Particularly decentralized authority and the distribution of academic work to the masses. I'd imagine the issues are less technical, and more cultural; academics would probably be hesitant to publish to a "journal" that substitutes peer review with semi-automated processes for historic reasons.