With so much doom and gloom in the media business — at least in the print media business — you’d think it would be tough to find anyone who thinks optimistically about the future. After all, most industry headlines in 2006 have told a story of declining audiences, softening ad revenue, job cuts, and disappointing earnings.
Then again, the people covering this chaos are the ones who stand to lose their privileged perches if bloggers, 15-year-old filmmakers, and Google continue to reinvent the media business as we know it.
Traditional media is being challenged. It amuses me that the people I know in the newspaper business completely write this off, but blogging and YouTube are changing the industry. I'm tired of talking about it because I know this is true. The newspaper business is taking hits. Probably, rural papers have it better off than larger syndicated versions if the layoffs over the past year are indicative. To quote Ferris Bueller:
"Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."
