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A few years ago a company for which I do consulting engaged me to send out customized press releases about a new publication. The targeted media outlets were the presumably independent "small town" newspapers, of which there are still thousands spread across the United States and Canada.

Selecting the four-hundred or so most likely prospects, we quickly discovered something that struck us as unusual, even odd. Of the approximately four-hundred newspapers across the continent to which we sent the tailored press releases, more than three-hundred exhibited the same "human interest" photograph on the front page for that week's issue. The caption, the same in every case, suggested without actually saying so that the children and the pumpkin on which they sat (our press release was sent out in mid-October, just before Halloween) were residents of the area, and that the oversized vegetable was locally-grown.

After seeing the same photograph and caption several times from California to Maine, and from Florida to the Yukon, we noted that in most cases the news stories on the front page were also identical, word-for-word, straight off the wire services. Genuinely local news was inevitably relegated to a special section inside the paper. As you might expect, this special section was always named (with appropriate lack of imagination), "Local News." We quickly discovered that if you wanted to know what is going on in a town, the blogosphere is a much better bet, even YouTube offering interesting local events and happenings.

The difficulty of concentrated ownership of the communications media is less serious than it might otherwise have been without the advent of the internet. Nevertheless, not only is limited ownership of the media a serious dilemma in its own right, it is a symptom of a much deeper problem, one that must be addressed if the world is to get itself out of the current political, economic, and financial crises.

First, of course, the fact that so few people control the major media outlets severely limits what people hear. "Policy" tends to be set according to the prejudices of management, who were (as we might expect) carefully selected to reflect the prejudices of their respective Boards of Directors . . . who were, in turn, elected by the owners because they happened to be representative of the views of those same owners.

Nor is this necessarily a bad thing. Everyone is entitled to his or her opinion. No one can report the news, write history, or even present

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