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Advertising revenues are way down in print media. This is immediately apparent when you pick up the newspapers. They're very thin these days. For one, papers don't have many writers anymore. The Chicago Tribune cut staff and has compensated by reducing the physical size of the paper while increasing the size and numbers of pictures. (Of course superCEO Sam Zell is rewarding himself handsomely for making a foolish decision and then running "his" purchase into the ground. Staff gets fired, Zell gets a load of cash -- even with his heavily, leveraged, doomed-from the start deal paid for mostly with other people's money and TribCo in bankruptcy.) The other reason the papers are thinner is because there are a lot fewer ads. There is talk of running papers as public services. That is interesting because it means that the system is not capable of reproducing its ideology and providing information, at least when it comes to print media. (Obviously, tv & radio are more functional as organs of the ideological reproduction of the status quo. ) So, either print media withers away, or it survives as something else. There is a possibility that print media could become something more critical. It has to change, because the system has effectively decided it doesn't need print. That's the optimistic take on it, anyway.
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