Indeed, academia as we know it is somewhat broken. We can either fix it or replace it completely (eg. by some crowdfunded model) and give it a new name.
Either way, democracy would greatly benefit from an independent information source. While there are some purely subjective decisions to make in a society, a lot of them have some objective underlying facts (eg. is smoking harmful? is there a global warming?). Without an independent information provider, there's no way the average citizen could cast an informed vote on these matters.
