All it would take someone to press suit against Craig’s list, and they would be forced to spend millions on staff to parse their ads, or drop real estate listings entirely.

The explanation that I see for the newspapers failing to do this is that their management these days is largely incompetent and ignorant of their own industry and the laws that apply to it.

“…soon to be dumped in the Great Browser Bookmark Bin.”

Infatuated with that line, postscript!

Speaking as I am from a nation of just 10 million in size and an obscure language likely only 15 million people comprehend planet-wide, I’d have to say the Digital Revolution in the Czech Republic can and will be capitalized upon in ways most Americans can’t fathom, given the relative sizes of the respective populations.

Abolishing things like paper newspapers and other printed materials makes sense for a small nimble society with governments focusing hard on the youth agenda.

Some Americans, for instance, lament the untimely passing of paper, and this despair is legitimate for a society thirty times the size of the Czech Republic’s. The sheer number of people *still* making primary use of the newspaper as their source of info is understandable in the US context.

Small nations don’t have this luxury, given that they’re not as well-endowed.

Bring on (yet another) revolution in this country, I say.

The Digital Revolution is going to swallow mass media. The hemorrhaging of jobs is not a sign of downfall, but rather of a failure to shift to a new business model.

What started as very different “tv” and “print” properties will be competing with each other in pixels. Channel 2 News will be more of a branding statement than anything else, because the channel number doesn’t mean anything online. (And next February when the digital signals come, all of your local teevee channel numbers become void.)

The financial barrier to become a media player continues to drop. Those who enjoyed near-monopolies (or FCC-mandated scarcity) within their media silos are just now discovering they are soon to be dumped in the Great Browser Bookmark Bin with everyone else.

What the digital revolution has done is open up more opportunities. There will always be newspapers. Always (at least during the next lifetime or two). There will always be a need for broadcast TV and radio. Mass advertising will be able to fill some need, depending on the campaign.

The old methods and processes won’t completely die. They may be in altered states, but they’ll still be viable options for the right situations.
-Mike