A fascinating discussion last week, and I hope to be able to make the next one. Huge thanks to CvillePodcast for recording the conversation.

News media across the country are collapsing. After recent staff cuts, furloughs and the shutdown of local printing for the Daily Progress, will Media General be doing more downsizing? Can we support four TV stations? Two weeklies? Will blogs replace all of them? What about the partnership between the non-profit Charlottesville Tomorrow and the Daily Progress, being watched nationally as a possible future model for local news?

That topic was the subject of a Left of Center forum jointly sponsored with cvillenews.com. The event is moderated by site founder Waldo Jaquith.

University of Virginia media studies professor Bruce Williams began with a historical overview of how changing “media regimes” the U.S. have impacted political communication and civil society, and how the recent “broadcast era” may have been an anomaly in the larger sweep of American history.

The future of media is something that affects us all. I love the point, “we need to separate the crisis of journalism from the crisis of newspapers.”