(or do you say “Tod und Verklärung“?)

It is easily a full-time job these days to read through the journals, blogs, trades, general-circulation publications, Web sites, and opinion playgrounds in order to stay up with what is being said about the trend line of the news industry.  (Er, Owen, say something that isn’t obvious.  Thank you.)

These writings, musings, and analyses may be divided in general categories as follows.

• Eschatology
• Punditry
• Advice
• Nostalgia
• Prestalgia (“A wistful longing for something that hasn’t happened” – Jesse Berst, 1999)
• Vujà dé (“An eerie feeling you’ve just seen something you never want to see again” – Berst again)
• Prescription
• Dead certainty (this is not unrelated to eschatology)

I fear that a lot of what I read does not try very hard to imagine a future context for the production or consumption of news, but rather performs some straight-line extrapolations … you know, the way analysts used to construct earnings forecasts.

The questions are all pretty clearly defined; the answers would clearly be in dispute, if anyone inside the business actually had the spare time to dispute them.  Since they don’t, dozens, scores, or hundreds of smart people are straining to make their voices heard above or through the rest.

Of course, one benefit that attaches to many voices in the conversation is that they are literate, thoughtful, and interesting, coming as they do from disciplined, well-read experts and professionals.  One less beneficial side effect of how good everyone sounds, though, is that even the silly ideas are not easily dismissed, including mine.  I hope.

Anyway, I have an idea that the ideas in the following are pretty good:

Steve Yelvington: Should this be illegal? Thinking a little more deeply about fair use, based on real-world experience.

Scott Rosenberg: Should Google pay a tax to media corporations?: More on what’s right and wrong with the Google-media company relationship, including some debunking of the last week’s palaver.  Excerpt: “The Web of Google, Craigslist and you and me is certainly a less hospitable place for the New York Times and CBS and Rupert Murdoch. But in the long run it will be a more interesting, more diverse and healthier environment for the rest of us.”

Christina Kerley:  Sheeple: Everything old is new (media) again: A fine dissection of the past week’s OprahAshtontwitterphilia.  One key sentence: “People are like sheep… and so it follows, that tweeple can be sheeple.”

Jay Rosen: Twilight of the curmudgeon class: A particularly delicious dissection of a set of canards about has happened, might happen, should happen, and could be happening from PressThink.  You go, Jay.

Again, I could extend this post well beyond 500 words by linking till the cows come home, or till I go to the opera tonight.  But there will be more tomorrow, and I want to enjoy Mozart tonight.  (Richard Strauss?  Later, he said, trying to put a nice big bow on this entry by referring back to the headline.)