Then, the Big Six. And now, the Big Four. For all the Matt Drudges churning away in small rooms, there are signs that the Internet may come to be dominated by big media. In June, Disney agreed to buy a large portion of the search engine company Infoseek. In the Internet Age, media concentration bears even closer watching.
Ownership needs to be demystified.
Customers are entitled to know what corporate entity is responsible for bringing them their news. And this is now getting harder to know, with the emergence of a crop of big media companies not normally associated with journalism. Too often, commentary on media concentration has been fragmentary or anecdotal. We need to recast the debate, which shows signs of stagnating. We need to add new perspectives.