Media meltdown?

This columnist says that "mainstream media" -- now sometimes referred to as legacy media -- have lost their monopoly on getting news and opinion to the general public. Technology changes have erased many of the barriers to the kind of mass communication that only large city newspapers and national TV networks could afford in the past. The result is a shift to non-traditional media sources: talk-radio, cable TV stations and, most significantly, the internet.

But he believes that the loss of their monopoly is not mainstream media's biggest problem:

The biggest problem is that, like most monopolists, they've spent so many years enjoying their position and not worrying about quality that they're left floundering now that competition is exposing their faults. Like the folks at GM who couldn't understand why people were buying Toyotas all of a sudden back in the 1970s, today's Big Media folks are shocked to see ratings and circulation numbers falling while readership for Internet sites skyrockets. And, like the auto executives, they're even starting to mumble about the need for protection.

That and the fact that they are now admitting they have a bias in their coverage. This year's political conventions are evidence of the erosion of their influence, he says.