The challenge is not to find the next big story, but to see who can say the nicest things about the companies whose products can be purchased with the click of a mouse on a nearby icon. Most of these stories originate with a publicity company or a spokesperson, often in a branch of the same corporation. Wire services also feed this market with timely items from around the world, encouraging other media firms to reduce their expenses by dropping more reporters. So we end the most media-saturated century ever. Instead of the multiplication of voices we might have expected, we find ourselves on an information killing floor, where slim dribbles of gossip are swiftly processed into time-filler for every media format and taste.
Media appears here every other week.
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