It’s easy to get mired in hopelessness and despair as thousands of fired journalists close their reporters’ notebooks, shelve their AP Stylebooks, and leave their posts, their beats often left unfilled.

It’s easy to feel a sense of righteousness as newspapers across the country crumble under a greedy business model that puts profit before quality journalism and protecting the public’s interest. And it’s easy to simply hope that the Internet provides a new vehicle for a robust press.

It’s a lot harder to make the shift from failing market-supported journalism to sustainable new models that support the production of journalism as a public good.

Today, Free Press’ Policy Director Ben Scott called on Congress to embark on a national journalism strategy, to develop policy solutions to the collapsing newspaper industry, and to promote a vibrant news marketplace.

In testimony before the House Subcommittee on Courts and Competition Policy, Scott weighed in on how to approach the work of “saving journalism”:

What we need to have journalism is journalists – and lots of them. The biggest problem we face today is not the collapsing business model of print newspapers, it is the possibility that this market failure will result in the dissipation of tens of thousands of highly trained and experienced reporters into other sectors of the economy. Or that it will dissuade tens of thousands of talented students from going to journalism school. I am not arguing that all journalists must be professionally trained to earn the moniker. Nor am I arguing that professionally trained journalists are necessarily better than those who are not.

But I am arguing that for the future of journalism to work, we need to create and sustain a model of news production in which it is possible to earn a living writing the news. And to return to my earlier vision that this crisis is an opportunity – we should strive for a model that makes it possible for more journalists than are working today to earn a living writing the news.

Combining the best elements of traditional and new media forms, we need to create and sustain models of news production in which it is possible to earn a living writing the news. These new institutions of journalism need to have the resources to cover expensive beats like international affairs and investigative reporting as well as the essential news about the workings of local government.

These policy solutions don’t need to mimic the business models that failed us, nor do they need to bail out the media companies that chased short-term revenue through disastrous media mergers. Scott said the knee-jerk reaction by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and others to allow for more media consolidation is not the answer:

This is exactly the opposite of what we should be doing. Not only does it reward bad business decisions—namely, leveraging news organizations with crippling debts to finance the last round of consolidation—but it also brings no new jobs, no new voices, and effectively props up a failed model. In other words, we should not subject journalism’s fate to the corporate consolidators who got us into this mess. It is not unlike rewarding the banks who drove our economy into the ground. Instead, we should seize this rare opportunity to liberate journalists and journalism from the downward spiral they’ve been stuck in for years.

Asking the government to help support the Fourth Estate has prickled some people who fear government regulation of speech. But Scott argued that government policies that restrict speech or favor particular speakers should not be tolerated:

There is nothing wrong with government policies that promote speech of all kinds. In fact, inherent to the First Amendment’s guarantee of the freedom of the press is the responsibility of the government to promote the widest possible dissemination of diverse viewpoints.

In order to support journalism and journalists as a public good, we need to re-imagine how we think of journalism enterprises and consider subsidy models sustained by grants, tax incentives, or public investments in education and infrastructure.

And we need to fully face the digital divide between America’s Internet haves and have-nots, which keeps more than one-third of the population from getting their news online.

Saving journalism is urgent, but it doesn’t need to be haphazard. In his testimony today, Scott outlined a series of guiding principles to help shape the policies and approaches that a national journalism strategy should include:

• Protect the First Amendment: Freedom of speech and freedom of the press are essential to a free society and a functioning democracy. Everyone should have the right to access and impart information through the media of their choice.

• Produce Quality Coverage: To self-govern in a democratic society, the public needs in-depth reporting that is accurate, credible and verifiable on local issues as well as national and international affairs.

• Provide Adversarial Perspectives: Reporting must hold the powerful accountable by scrutinizing the actions of government and corporations. Journalism should foster genuine debate.

• Promote Public Accountability: Newsrooms must serve the public interest, not private or government aims, and should be treated primarily as a public service, not a commodity. Journalism must be responsive to the needs of diverse and changing communities.

• Prioritize Innovation: Journalists must use new tools and technologies to report and deliver the news. The public needs journalism that crosses traditional boundaries and is accessible to the broadest range of people across platforms.

Certainly, it’s a frightening time for one of America’s most vital institutions, and for our democracy. But out of the current system’s failures comes opportunity, and we will only be thwarted by an inability to use our imaginations to support what journalism is at its very core – a record of events disseminated to the people.

It’s easy to simply hope the journalism crisis somehow gets solved. But we need concrete action and a comprehensive policy approach. We need to develop a national journalism strategy, not to find the answer, but a multitude of answers.