In a much-circulated essay, Clay Shirky, an Internet consultant and professor at NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program, compares the current turbulence in the news business to the disorder brought about by the invention of the printing press, when old forms of transmitting information were breaking down and new ones had yet to cohere—a transition accompanied by much confusion and uncertainty. The historical analogy can be taken a step further: just as the advent of printing helped break the medieval Church's hold on the flow of information, so is the rise of the Internet loosening the grip of the corporate-owned mass media. A profound if unsettling process of decentralization and democratization is taking place.