Fortune bemoans media choice, "extinction of mass culture"

Marc Gunther writes in Fortune that the "advent of 300 channels and the Internet has fragmented audiences - explosion of choice has left us poorer." Three-quarters of the way into his article he explains some reasonse as to why he thinks this is the case:

"...there is more information available to us than ever, but I don't think we are better informed. Niche media will, inevitably, continue to weaken mass media."

"...the moderate and responsible (okay, bland) voices of the MSM get drowned out by partisan, opinionated cableheads and bloggers. Politics in America has become polarized for many reasons, but a big one is the fact that people can now filter the news and opinion they get to avoid exposure to ideas with which they disagree."

So evidently the good ol' days when thoughtful, responsible grown-ups like Dan Rather, Walter Cronkite, and Helen Thomas got to decide what the little people heard, read, and saw were preferable to having information decentralized.