Two contrasting views of the future of media here. The first from EPIC (taken from Andy Lark’s keynote at the New Communications Forum), which predicts a disruptive impact of new technologies on news distribution and consumption. Namely that the combination of blogging, Google search, social networking, recommendation engines, filtering and PVRs, will create new platforms for the way news is generated, edited, distributed and consumed. Ultimately it predicts that traditional media, such as the New York Times, will be forced back offline in Luddite, elitist disgust.

The second from USA Today sees these technologies as more of a fad akin to pamphleteering. It predicts that ‘Blogs will push media to change. At some point, some blogs will gain
real influence and make money, and they will get bought by big media
companies.’ The forecast here is that news generation will remain in the hands of a few controlled by commercial motives.

USA Today is on the offensive, taking on the blogosphere with a volley of belittling denial. What’s the next phase? Oh yes, angry cries of foul play, isn’t it?