Clay Shirky's Writings About the Internet  Economics & Culture,
Media & Community, Open Source  The FCC, Weblogs, and Inequality
First published June 3, 2003 on the "Networks, Economics, and
Culture" mailing list. Subscribe to the mailing list.
Yesterday, the FCC adjusted the restrictions on media ownership,
allowing newspapers to own TV stations, and raising the
ownership limitations on broadcast TV networks by 10%, to 45%
from 35%. It's not clear whether the effects of the ruling will
be catastrophic or relatively unimportant, and there are smart
people on both sides of that question. It is also unclear what
effect the internet had on the FCC's ruling, or what role it
will play now.  What is clear, however, is a lesson from the
weblog world: inequality is a natural component of media. For
people arguing about an ideal media landscape, the tradeoffs are
clear: Diverse. Free. Equal. Pick two.  The Developing Debate
The debate about media and audience size used to be focussed on
the low total number of outl