Newspaper journalist and blogger Mark Evans has some interesting insights for the newspaper publishers and the media conglomerates that own them; lower ROI’s are now the norm, get used to it, “reposition your newsrooms to cover less news” and “focus on providing analysis, perspective, context”. In other words, newspapers are now a niche business, no longer the mass media they once were – or least that’s what they’re rapidly becoming. Which begs the next question, what about convergence? Wasn’t the concentration of all that billion dollar traditional media (cable/broadcast/newspapers/radio) supposed to stave off the global media onslaught? Paradoxically, the focus of that battle was other media-laden 800-pound gorillas (Newscorp, anyone?) when in reality the true menacing hordes are the thousands of citizen journalists that report, however erroneously, what’s happening in their small part of the world. In fact, right now, the real scoop is that Mark Evans himself is the “next generation newspaper”, as evidenced when Om Malik pulled a Business 3.0 on Business 2.0, and that media behemoths are ill-equipped to battle anything less than other media behemoths.

What it means: Media fragmentation will continue and those that can harness the of power citizen journos may win, but they’re a wily bunch as are their readers. A new local media paradigm will eventually emerge.