I already can't remember what life was like before the Internet. I do worry that the profiteers will try to destroy what they can't control.

My dream is to engage people like Sol and The Amigos on a thread just like this one. What are the odds?

I've been thinking about this for a while now. A decade ago the net was supposed to be the next big thing for business, but it didn't work out that way.

In the past if a public figure said "we need to have a public debate about this" it meant that media, business and politicians would debate and the rest of us had to just watch and then live with their decision. Now we can participate without worrying that an editor will chuck out our letters or a shock jock will cut us off.

As it turns out the one thing we want to do (discuss issues among ourselves) profits us - if increasing our understanding of other points of view is considered profit. But I can't see how business can make money out of it, or how business, media and politics can control the agenda they way they always have.

The way things have turned out the great unwashed are becoming informed but nobody's making money out of it. It seems the powers that be will either have to learn to live with it, or take drastic measures none of us will like. And I can't imagine the big knobs just learning to live with it.

I find the substance of this article worrying.
Maybe it is indeed truth that without profit media cannot survive and the diversity of desires shown by the internet may make sales volume too small for profit.

Surely there is something more than profit to be had from media?

If the media was accurate, delivering factual news with fewer deliberate omissions I would not have turned to the Internet. It is time consuming and whilst the exercise of judgement may mean not reading a piece as with print media, it is rather slower to find the next, even if using a search engine, than say a paper.

Until now I had not bothered to think how profit allowing continued functioning is made despite periodically contributing to sites, seeking more to satisfy my need, and dare I say democracies need for factual information so that participation is informed.
Though of course many long books have been written about the usefulness or otherwise of the media as information source, recent events, in which for profit presumably the extent of investigative reporting has declined and the acceptance of Government hand out increased, concomitant with increased omission, leaving the electorate with only jingoistic emotional reaction and consequent war and bias
A state which presumably Herman Goering would applaud.
This article has nothing to say on the role of the media in keeping the bastards honest and us at a less emotional state, fearful?
Who funds or finds profit from this?
Would be Alexander the Great, war industries and corporations cleaning up after war, pun not intended, profit. Oil usage, pollution and the undertakers business benefit, a profit.
But none of these of themselves make for media profit.
None appear to be controlled for honest profit or useful input