One of the revolutionary features of the Internet is that news is no longer local. Whether it is The Abilene Reporter-News or The New York Times, the news in that newspaper is available globally.
That means I, from where I sit in Southern California, can refer all interested parties to a powerful story I read this morning in The Times. Those parties, if they agree, can forward the story on. Frank Rich this morning wrote about the future of journalism. His topic was the first law of media, which states: the media is a business. Hence a conflict: a democracy such as ours depends directly on journalism, but somebody has to pay for that journalism. Thus the crisis of the journalism business – who will pay for it – is also the crisis of democracy.
The print circulation of The Times is minuscule, compared to the power of the Internet to distribute this news. The Internet, representing a death threat to the journalism business, is also the voice that shouts the threat to a circulation without boundaries, in which some new business model exists. Revolutionary times. Quoting Mr. Rich, ". . . the time will soon arrive for us to put up or shut up. Whatever shape journalism ultimately takes in America, make no mistake that in the end, we will get what we pay for."
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