According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the notion of media as we use it today stems from the late 16th century notion of an "intermediate agency" between parties. It is only coherent, then, that the first printed periodical in history is found and published around the same time, in 1594. More than a century after the death of Gutenberg, the Mercurius Gallobelgicus was a sort of bi-annual newsletter, written entirely in Latin, and distributed to elites across Europe, from its home-based of Cologne (Germany), to England and Italy. 

In its early phases, the production of such "intermediate agencies" relied implicitly on a vast system of correspondence that in turn, made the best of pre-modern mailing systems involving several intermediaries, or else were shipped directly via a system of messengers. The cost of such "foreign correspondents" could only be afforded by rich merchants whose interests in remote places required it. 

On a panel at Advertising Week recently, NYU's Jay Rosen described these medieval hirees : "The first writers to ever get paid as professional correspondents of anything, were hired by merchants in distant cities, and wrote newsletters to them about biddings. The news was exactly what the business news are todays: wars, ships, court gossip, etc."

In many ways, such reporting is more abundant now than it ever was before, and those who are willing to pay for quality reporting are able to obtain detailed accounts from several sources simultaneously. The fact is, the issue we are contemplating is not one of scarcity of supply. Quite the opposite. As suppliers of news and entertainment, media organizations are faced with unprecedented competition on the supply-side, whereas the demand has increased only slightly, and in more specific areas than ever before. 

This "displacement", in a nutshell, does not affect those who are already knowledgeable and, most often, willing to pay for private newscasts : paid-subscription newsletters, international networks of subsidiaries and, to some extent, personal correspondents are thriving in this new environment. A recent report on foreign reporting published by the University of Oxford finds that this transformation does not affect Asia and the developing world as much, as they are "building their own journalistic capacity". 

The author, Richard Sambrook, points out that the West's stake in the global architecture of information is slowly falling back to the modest scope that its demography affords, largely due to the complacent posture of the organizations at the helm of the industrialization of news. Paradoxically, or perhaps in a very coherent movement of affairs, Western news organizations have also been concentrated to a level beyond repair, transforming news-providing entities into yet another asset in vast media portfolios encompassing numerous industries. The peculiarities of journalism have been lost in the process. 

In fact, what we are witnessing is a crisis of legitimacy and credibility, whose main victim is the public. The mass-production of news has lost its place on its monopolistic pedestal, and with its downfall, great confusion has come about, especially in terms of public policy. For nearly a full century, the increasing monopolistic nature of news organizations created the conditions in which they were able to extract rents from vast populations of captive audiences. By managing the short supply, they were able to maintain (relatively) high prices for information, and cross-subsidize activities between them.

The foundations on which laid the monopolies are being dismantled, or rather, pushed to their limits, and the former rentiers now have to face the music of competition, where profits are lower, nil or negative. To tackle the issue, paywalls were brought up, then torn down. The tune has changed significantly, and no one seems to care much. An exit strategy may be in good order for some. Dance to the music they say. No matter how inaudible it may seem, the end of monopolies has sounded. Let's hope it does not fall on deaf ears… 

"I tell you: one must still have chaos in oneself, to give birth to a dancing star. I tell you: you have still chaos in yourselves." – F. Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra