Two Cheers for Media Fragmentation

When critics of the contemporary media scene aren't bitching about media consolidation, they're popping Pepcid about media fragmentation.

Buzzmachine's Jeff Jarvis has some sharp thoughts about the latter here:

Turn that word [fragmentation] around and look at it from the opposite perspective—from the individual's perspectived—and it's really a question of control. The audience is moving to lots of new places now that they have the choice, now that they have control. The single, shared national experience we keep sighing about existed for only a few decades as we lived with three networks and fewer and fewer newspapers. The natural state of media is fragmentation: consumers gain choice, media loses control, citizens gain control. Fragmentation is good.

All praise the niche market in media and culture.