In the words of Bob Dylan “the times they are a’changin”….

The New York Times today, understandably (from their point of view), laments the slow lingering death of “old media”.

During my youth way, way back in the 50’s and 60's there were three, then two major newspapers in Los Angeles (where I grew up), The Los Angeles Times, delivered every morning and the Los Angeles Herald Express which was sold on the street in the afternoon. Until 1962 LA had an additional morning paper, The Examiner. The Herald Express and the Examiner merged, and then there was The Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, sold on the streets during the afternoon until it folded in 1989. The Times was owned by the Chandler family, the Herald-Examiner was owned by the William Randolph Hearst organization (bored yet?), that’s part of the problem, they all got really boring).

There was The Valley News and Greensheet and the Spanish language La Opinion. We had three national network channels, KNXT (CBS), KNBC (NBC) and KABC (ABC), and there were three independent channels broadcasting on channels 5 (KTLA now owned by Fox), 9 (now KCAL owned by CBS) and channel 13 (KCOP, now owned by, you guessed it, Fox) and as I recall, two leading AM radio stations. I remember the birth of FM….a new way to hear music.

Today there is one major English language daily, The Los Angeles Times and the Spanish language newspaper La Opinion which thrives to this day. One “independent channel is owned by CBS and two by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. The AM radio waves have been taken over by right wing talk and Christian broadcasting.

“Old Media” is dying. It’s dying because it no longer fulfills the need of the people and is the victim of a new technology that has made their self-serving opinion absurdly narrow in a time of unlimited citizen journalism and the proliferation of many, many more professionals who have a much broader voice - all born by the World Wide Web (you are reading this blog, right?).

It used to be that we read the Times every morning. We were updated with “breaking news” by the Herald Examiner in the afternoon. We got our weather, sports, traffic and breaking news (mostly murder and mayhem), and gossip on the local radio.
Today a simple Google search for “newspapers” returns 104 million results. I can read “newspapers” online from every corner of the planet. If I want to know what is happening in Korea I can go to The Korea Times Online. If you want to know what is current in New Delhi, simply go to http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/. I’m in Nevada, if I want to know what is happening in Maine I can go to http://www.usnpl.com/menews.php and find links to all of the newspapers in the state.

Right wing-Drudge Report, left wing, The Huffington Post. You get the point.
The New York Times article would have us believe that the cut-back taking place in newsrooms across America is somehow a loss and is a danger to the flow of reliable information. I couldn't disagree more. There has never been more information available, never. We have to work hard to tune out the noise, but the information is out there.

Today, I can read and learn from the best minds on the planet. The teachings of economics professors from Princeton and Harvard are available to me everyday. Experts in every field are just a click away.

Democracy is not a spectator sport. Citizenship requires that we keep ourselves informed and aware. Rather than lament the demise of “old media” we should be celebrating the birth of new media which this humble little, mostly unnoticed blog is a small part.

All this said, I love the "new" New York Times. It gives me opportunities (more and more everyday) to interact with many columnists, commentators and reporters for whom I have the utmost respect. I view "new media" as an opportunity and I hope that these wonderful organizations can get the economics right. If they don't, all of us citizen journalists, citizen commentators, bs gass-bags and would be pundits will still be here.