My less is less than yours

I have this nightmare that media will devolve in a battle of who can do more with less. Round after round of doing MORE with less until there is no less to have less of.

Maybe, I'm not asleep. It may just be "media convergence" of my dream state with waking reality. It seems that way more so each day.

At WBIR, blogger Katie Allison Granju says having more experience already at doing more with less may actually give TV stations an advantage over newspapers.

She says:

"I'd argue that broadcast outlets have always been able to do more with less, so in some ways, they're better able to adapt to the concept of the do-it-all multimedia journalist model."

Granju is riffing off a Bill Hobbs post that predicts Nashville's largest newspaper, The Tennessean, will one day go the route the City Paper has taken in reducing print publication frequency. Hobbs suggests that even as the older technology, newspapers may have an advantage over broadcasters on the Web if they can free themselves of the cost of newsprint and home delivery.

Hobbs makes some cogent points including that newspapers have larger staffs (still) than broadcast outlets, they can add video capabilities cheaper than TV stations can add staff, and can leverage inexpensive technologies to be multimedia 24/7 news sources.

All that said, doing more with less is still a nightmare.