Whistling in the Dark

The post yesterday about AOL's CEO Parsons comments about the old and new media seems to have generated, either directly or indirectly, a couple of articles that follow up on the issue raised by Parsons. The first is in today's LA Times and is a debate between a professor of communications at University of Illinois and Glenn Reynolds, who is a law professor at UT (Tennessee) but more importantly the motive force behind Instapundit and a whole bunch of other blogging enterprises. The Times article was titled "Where's the paper; What will be the first major American city without a daily newspaper?"

Professor McChesney mentions a book publisher who argued that all print stuff would go digital by 2002. His premise is that "all media are gravitating toward digital standards, but it will not happen evenly across all media sectors or overnight." Well, duh! Professor McChesney also argues that papers will survive when they do a better job at publishing local news. (In this case, one would presume that he means an expanded notion of local that might include news specific to a community - so the WSJ does a pretty good job.) Indeed, if you look at the market area for the LA Times, the LAT has been losing circulation while a chain of local papers (called the Surburban papers) has been picking up steam - their skill is covering local areas like the South Bay of LA through what used to be a throw away paper called the Daily Breeze.

Professor McChesney also makes an analogy to Shaq - while not the superstar of yesterday he is still pretty important. Reynolds makes the comment that he wished that anybody in the MSM could "play the game." I do not think that any responsible person (and Reynolds is very responsible) have argued (and he does not in his counterpoint) that the MSM is going away immediately nor does Reynolds dispute McChesney's contention that the effects will not be the same in all areas. But both writers recognize a significant and continuing decline of the news business.

On CNN.com today there is an article about declining TV ratings. About 2.5 million fewer people are watching the big four (ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox - and one should also include CNN) than last year. People are shudder making up their own schedules. CNN suggests that some observers have blamed this on Daylight Savings Time. I think it is a bit more simple. When people have choices, they make them. When TIVO first came into the marketplace I was at a party for a friend of my aunt in North Carolina. When I went up to wish her a happy 95 birthday she said "You're from California, that is a place where that TIVO is made and that allows you to "watch TV the way YOU want to" - if she could get it why can't the MSM?