>Now for my real reply...
>>>I agree they will disappear, but I will still be sad to see them gone.
>>>And I agree that the next generation won't miss them.
>>>But it will be a different kind of "news" than we are used to today, too, because it will have little in the way of local news
>>
>>Oh, I don't know. There could still be your favourite local newspaper beamed to you in your home.
>
>You clipped an important part. Anyway... a "local" newspaper is, in my opinion, highly unlikely, simply because of the costs of production versus possible revenue. It will become exclusively a corporate thing, which of course means BIG corporation, headquartered in some tax sheltered country and workers being mainly in China (India for now).
>It's doubtful that smaller town reporters, who will basically all be freelancers, will be able to live on what the corps. will pay them. Thus the disappearance of local news.

Now I'd've said that running those big printing presses and the miles of newsprint that goes through them was a major factor towards cost (and was even more so in the days of the closed-shop highly-paid print-setters, pre-DTP)

>
>Only because no one has found the market yet. They will.
>I'm told that skipping the commercials is one of the valued features of "TIVO".

Maybe, with the reduced production costs, they won't need to advertise so much? Anyway, I still don't give a stuff about them.

As for our news being farmed out to China - er - hello - totalitarian state - not to be trusted with the free press - never mind the language barrier (that we already see with offshore tele-centres) :-)