That leaves about 36 million people who are either not watching news or are going somehere else for news. They have to be divided between talk radio and the net. The key factor is Talk Radio is not growing and the internet as a source of news is.
The media has always been the middle man between elected officials, candidates, political parties, and other news sources such as law enforcement, fire departments and appointed officials. I wonder if there is a way for the internet to eliminate the middle man... to allow news makers and the public to have open and unfiltered two way communications.
Even today there are threads that get a handful of views and comments and others that get many thousands. It is a feed back that no letter to the editor or call in show can match. It seems to me that news that would not go through a filter would be worth while for any political party and for the public as well
If the MSM is indeed dying, then what do we use to replace their articles that we post?
It is perhaps worth pondering... where is the internet is going.
That thought was rattling around in my head as I read your fine post. Thank you.
Since I don't believe any media can truly be "unbiased", I think the national left-wing media will downsize until they are supportable by an audience with similar political views. Same on the right, except that they will experience growth (e.x. Fox).
From my "older" perspective, the big change taking place is that most knowledgeable news consumers no longer buy into the MSM being composed of unbiased, fact gathering, trustworthy, "journalists". In this former MSM fantasy world of the pre-internet era, Walter Cronkite represented the ideal "journalist" and was widely considered as "the most trusted man in America". Most of us thought we were in "unbiased media" heaven, because they told us we were. Then the internet and talk-radio came along, and the present conflict began. The question is; Can the anti-MSM survive the coming DEM/MSM effort to limit conservative talk radio and control information on the internet?