Crowds and the News

I'm currently reading What Would Google Do, by Jeff Jarvis (I hope to write a full report later), but one of the things he talks about is giving consumers control over what a producer makes.  One example he uses is the news.  I think this is a bad example of the wisdom of crowds.  (This topic fascinates me.  At some point I might just have to change the title of the blog.)  Ideally, news would consist of what is most important or historically relevant.  Instead, the news gives us 2 weeks of a hoax about an over-sized helium balloon. The media caters to what the crowd wants and we get garbage.  I want a system that denies people the garbage and reports on good "quality" news.  I don't have a good idea for that yet or I'd write about it.  I'm open to suggestions.