Columbia Journalism Review has an excellent piece on how journalists might productively think about information overload. It makes a number of points, including these: Information overload can lead to a “learned helplessness” response. Many news media are contributing to this learned helplessness rather than helping their users; they’re diminishing the value of the information they present rather than adding to it. And journalists need emphatically to give up the gatekeeper notion, and think of themselves more as guides. The article is long, but worth it.