No doubt that consolidation has gutted once proud radio news outlets in larger markets but in my 24 years at KORN and in South Dakota, local news coverage has always thrived and improved through evolving technology and the dedication of small market stations to deliver the news that really matters to the communities served.

Stop by anytime! I’ll even give you a personally guided tour of the World’s Only Corn Palce.

I’ll grant Ed’s point that radio news still exists in smaller markets. NPR has the advantage of being easier for travelers to find because most of their stations are at the bottom end of the FM dial. From what I can tell, though, there’s precious little reporting going on at the smaller market commercial stations. Few stations have enough staff to let any of them leave the building. That’s not the fault of a part-time news director or a one-person news department, it’s just reality.

The point I was trying to make about NPR is that the newscasts are getting better with the addition of more sound and quicker pacing. The hourly summaries used to drive me nuts, too, Elisha. I think they’re improving.

Ed’s other comments about the business model and the career track at the networks are well taken. Unfortunately, I don’t have a solution to either one.

By the way, I’m a former TV anchor who now works at a small-market, all news commercial radio station.

Check out places like Mitchell, SD; Dover, OH; Marshfield, MA; even Akron, OH. Listen to Lorain, OH where the news director there still does a hell of job despite going part-time, or the folks in Youngstown who still talk, inform and squeeze out an occasional story on their own (sarcasm directed not at them); look at what Michigan Radio does in Ann Arbor, or have the traditional news flamethrowers in the big cities (WTOP, KYW, WCBS, WINS, WBBM, KCBS, KNX, KIRO, etc.) turning out the lights at 6? Even the ever-popular whipping boy for those singing the consolidation blues, Clear Channel, provide news for their communities — as well as places to talk about it.

That’s like says television news is dead because CNN just talks about it. “The Situation Room” still packs a hell of a lot of news in all that talk, don’t they? Last time I checked, changing times haven’t killed print — but it is forcing them to change. Same with TV. Same with radio. Same with the web. We spend way too much time bemoaning the way things aren’t the way they used to be.

Here’s what’s really changed: the public, our neighbors, our communities, our customers — have decided they want their news in different ways. It’s not just about what pops out of a speaker or a picture tube or leaps off a piece of paper anymore. The challenge for broadcasters and publishers and citizen journalists isn’t how to do reporting and journalism, it’s how to make money to afford doing so. The model of communities wanting to know what’s going on in their backyard hasn’t changed, the method of satisfying that need has evolved and we haven’t figured out yet the business model is what’s broken.

Would be nice to spend more time of fixing that and building new sales and marketing approaches rather than decrying the end of the world that isn’t really the end.

And a note to my friends at the network: want to really start rebuilding the farm system? Leave New York, Washington and Atlanta and take a drive with the radio on. Be prepared to listen, and you’d better have a good pitch on why the people working for us should consider changing their quality of life to meet your needs. Recruit the bench; that’s changed, too. They aren’t standing in line anymore begging for the “big” jobs because the new crop has figured out 24/7 is something they expect a convenience store to offer, not a career. That’s another model you need to change.