I hope I’m not insulting your intelligence, but of course many of the trivial solutions have obvious problems:

First-come first-served: The wealthy organizations will just buy up the slots using interns to stand in line (as they do now in some situations)

Lottery: Seems overly ideological, and also easy to astroturf (start up hundreds of member blogs and enter them all as “citizens”).

Media Blogger’s Association as intermediary: Lots of people don’t like that, say it’s a just another old-boys-club (disclaimer: I’m a member, and I know you are too).

Q: In a situation of journalistic scarcity, how should the positions be allocated?

not-A: Old media bad. New media good. Old media == gatekeepers, elitists, priests. New media == democratic, people, rebels. There should be no scarcity. The public interest for the interested public. Four legs good, two legs bad …

But in a non-ideal world, if a decision has to be made under imperfect and rationed circumstances, what should it be?

The gatekeeping would be a lot less troublesome, of course, if legislatures would just put cameras into the chambers and committee rooms — and made all of what they do in public places part of the public domain.

What should be done?

Seriously. I’ve been through this myself in various forms. Do you propose a lottery for the slots? First-come, first-served? Something like the Media Blogger’s Association making the decision?

There’s always going to be scarce resources somewhere.