I love meatier pieces like these that give a lot more background and perspective than the average short article. Thanks for the link!
 

Very interesting and disturbing.

Recently I've been wondering whether we're headed for a time where there simply isn't going to be a large stable consensus about *anything* very much.

And the question is, whether the "he said, she said" or "balance everyone's views" which destroys consensus is an artifact of the concentration of media in the hands of large biased companies; or whether it's simply a pre-echo of what it's gonna be like when all MSM has fragmented into micromedia.

In a world where the blogosphere, *is* the media, will it be easier or harder for a consensus belief about evolution or the reality of climate change to self-organize? Or will it be impossible?

And if such consensus is impossible, this really looks like the end of any sort of viable democratic nation state which can claim to act because of a mandate from the majority of the electorate.

That doesn't mean states necessarily go away, but without feeling beholden to the people, they're gonna be (even more) a vehicle for special interest groups.
 

the key point here is that it isn't technology thats really killing news it is poor management and the changing nature of newspaper ownership