In place of the portrait that would normally be on its cover at this time of year, Time Magazine has a mirror. You, says the caption, are the Person of the Year. “Yes, you. You control the Information Age. Welcome to your world.”
Richard Stengel, the managing editor, says the cover is an acknowledgment that

individuals are changing the nature of the information age, that the creators and consumers of user-generated content are transforming art and politics and commerce, that they are the engaged citizens of a new digital democracy. From user-generated images of Baghdad strife and the London Underground bombing to the… hundreds of thousands of individual outpourings of hope and poetry and self-absorption, this new global nervous system is changing the way we perceive the world. And the consequences of it all are both hard to know and impossible to overestimate.

Mr Stengel says that some people in our trade find this a dangerous development:

Journalists once had the exclusive province of taking people to places they’d never been. But now a mother in Baghdad with a videophone can let you see a roadside bombing, or a patron in a nightclub can show you a racist rant by a famous comedian. These blogs and videos bring events to the rest of us in ways that are often more immediate and authentic than traditional media.

So are he and Time worried? Not at all.

These new techniques, I believe, will only enhance what we do as journalists and challenge us to do it in even more innovative ways.

They could start by freshening the language. Their photo essay about YouTube is headed with that knackered old-media phrase “The Meteoric Rise”.