Message to Big Media: it's over. Question for Free People: now what?

That the elite institutions of Big Media have lost hegemony over the public debate is beyond dispute. The evidence of this breakup over who decides what should be placed on the public's agenda for discussion and what ideas and positions on these issues were respectable is evident every day and has been gathering for years.  Ratings, earnings, ad revenues, circulation figures, classified inches, stock prices all indicate declines in the forture of the corporate communication enterprises; and this says nothing about the incompetence and bias that is increasingly evident every day in the journalistic output of these enterprises. The failure of the professional jouralists employed in the Mainstream Media to comprehend and communicate the community's peril in the Post Sept 11 World only crystalized the public's growing rejection of the practices and output of the broadcasting news networks, major daily newspapers, and weekly news magazines. Today innovations in technology, new business models, changing demographics and consumer preferences have allowed new media - among them, 24-7 cable and web news, talk radio explosion due to satellite radio and pod casting, web logs, and the emergence of pop entertainers (Dennis Miller, Bill Maher, Jon Stewart, Oprah et al) as preferrred political and social commentators and debate arbitrators - to occupy ever more influence on the course and content of the public debate. Quillnews has been hammering this theme since its inaugural posts in 2004. Much of the energy I have brought to this site has come from my belief that this change in our communication world will have profound consequences during the War on Islamofascism and created, in effect, a New Battlefield that we as free people have yet to recognize and understand. I believe that the communications world has been so altered by technology and commerce that free people must review their assumptions about what constitutes responsible and acceptable behavior by professional journalists and their corporate employers in today's environment. (Editor's aside: My commentary on these subjects are in catetories labeled Big Media's Meltdown, News & Media-ville, and The New Battlefield at left.) Excellent posts in recent days elsewhere are Roger Ailes essay in the WSJ about the top five books on the news media, and Hugh Hewitt's essay on Columbia Journalism School in the WS. Stay tuned...  (Update: Lifson in AT) (Update2: RCP blog) (Update 3: Jack Kelly of Irish Pennants has two excellent posts of the changing newspaper market and journalism profession.)