What an odd comment to hear from someone working as a journalist (being charitable to Wired). It can easily be a bad thing. Let's not forget they were *already* unleashed upon the world, doing their thing. I'm supposed to be delighted that they now have fewer resources and have to spend a good deal more time on scrabbling for cash rather than reporting?

Key here is democracy needs to function. It's really something everyone needs to understand, that we are headed for a Walmart/Starbucks/Microsoft/Google news media syndrome. This is one case where one-stop shopping and big corporations running the show should not be tolerated. Again,you wrote another eye-opening good 'fiddyrant' here.

Philip...

Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you view it) journalism is undergoing a sea change not unlike those that have happened in many other industries as a result of technological advancement. Those who most recently trained as traditional journalists (J-schoolers) will be affected the most, as they will have less entrenched audiences to sell to as the "old media" contracts.



Audiences are shifting away from paper due to the myriad of new choices entering the market. The horse is already out of the barn on this and the worst is yet to come for the old guard. Expect more layoffs and outright closures.



But all is not lost. There are plenty of writers and journalists making money selling their work to online pubs (see Reason or TCS Daily) OR pooling their talents and resources together to build non-Adwords networks of revenue generation (see Pajamas Media). This isn't simply bloggers writing about their pets behavior either, as is evidenced by Radley Balko's exposure and excellent reporting on the Cory Maye case. He's not a traditional print journalist, yet the quality of work is there.



Talent will still rise. Ad dollars are flowing to the net. The key is building new businesses around this shifting audience. Contrary to the negativism, there are a lot of writers making excellent money on the web. Additionally, people are still buying books in droves.



Education and years of training in one profession does not guarantee any stability in that career choice. You sometimes must react and adapt to massive changes, or even change careers when opportunities dry up. See the American Steel Worker and the highly paid general MD of the 1970's as examples.



In 2007, everyone (potentially) now owns a printing press. This removes the relative scarcity of the market for information. A change in costs and pay is the only natural result. This does not remove the potential for a highly paid writing career, it only makes it vastly more competitive and difficult.



DJ

I see this as just part of a larger trend that began over 25 years ago with the beginning of the so-called "Reagan Revolution." More and more people are thrown out of jobs that used to pay a living wage, and are forced to scramble just to get by. Meanwhile, a small minority become fabulously wealthy - and there is a direct correlation between their wealth and the desperate poverty of many others who would've been earning a decent, middle class income in previous decades.

As insecure as things are now for those who have years of training and experience, they are even more desperate for those less well educated and experienced. The elites keep on touting retraining as the way to adjust to these new conditions, as if there were something to be retrained for that could provide the same kind of security as used to exist. I think that only a few rise very far in this situation (although the rewards for those few may indeed be quite awesome - or obscene - depending on how you look at it), and their rise may have as much to do with luck as with talent. But for the people at the top, who set the agenda for these kinds of things, these are the best of times.

newmark founded/runs craigslist which has stolen 100s of millions in classified ads from papers driving their revs down to where they are laying ppl off. for ex, the village voice started losing money, and they owned the paper i worked at, and so that forced the investors to force a shot gun marriage with a company called new times which took them and my paper over and came in and ask me to commit a crime for a story and so i quit. it's all connected to craig who to date has not put dime one i know of into any content creation. he says citizen journalists will save us. yeah right.

who ever said life was fair?

Strong words. I think I've said it before, but I'll say it again: I fear that the only non-electronic newspapers about 100 years from now may be The New York Times, USAToday, and The Wall Street Journal. (At the very least anyway.)