Posted 9:22 AM by Gene

Jack Shafer and Robert J. Samuelson and other defenders of media bigness think if they can conjure up enough numbers and sacred-sounding presto-changeo like THE HEFFENSPIEL-HIRSCHFELD INDEX (or whatever Groucho called it) they can get people into thinking that MEDIA ARE FREE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Leaving aside (and I made THIS point before, when Jack's pen-pal BEN first brought it up) that such folk have a habit of slanting their stats (Ben says CHEAP CHANNEL "only" owns an eighth of all radio stations, but he INTENTIONALLY IGNORES MARKET SHARE, as defined by RATINGS, not to mention AD REVENUES; by those numbers I suspect the CHEAP controls AT LEAST a quarter of the radio business), the problem with monopoly isn't STATS, it's AURA -- the AURA of big media thinking and acting alike. Dropping an impressive sounding list of names like "Gannett, Knight Ridder, Cox, Scripps, McClatchy, Landmark, Copley, Newhouse, Freedom, Hearst, MediaNews, and Tribune," etc., etc., ETC. has the exact OPPOSITE EFFECT of what you intended, JACK -- ALL these companies put out an homogenized, centrally-controlled, marketing-driven, discardable product that only occasionally serves the public interest. And just because media stocks are in the tank now doesn't mean they always have been, or will be. Remember AOL at $90? One more inconvenient fact: many media biggies have been in business in one form or another for at least eighty years, some for more than a century; sorry Jack, they're NOT so easily toppled. We must always keep a sharp and jaundiced eye open wherever the GODS OF MEDIA rule -- whatever their names.