One would think that a profession devoted to reporting rapid change might have grown out of being surprised and would certainly have grown out of admitting to it; but, no. When the AOL TIme/Warner proposed merger was announced there were such shrieks of surprise that it might have been a chorus of chaperones beholding the arrival of Sir Percival Picaresque at the Bath Assembly Rooms. All around us the television companies, traditional, cable and satellite, are cosying up with each other and with the Internet service providers. Horror of horrors, the global network is soon to be in the hands of global companies. Meanwhile, showing once again that not all great inventors remain so throughout their lives and that some are prone to that inelasticity brought on by middle age, Bill Gates took a wrong turn in his career by going back to software and architecture.

What is puzzling in almost all of the analysis is the schizophrenia; no story is complete without a reference to rapid change and every story is written as if what is being analysed is the last chapter, frozen in time. Thus, a couple of years ago before Java broke into the public consciousness and well before Linux, we were told that in this rapidly changing world Bill Gates would have a global operating system and software monopoly forever. Now we are being told that very soon a handful of media companies will own all of the world's content creation and information transmission and carrying capacity. We are told, in a Fukuyaman miasma that such an unfolding will - watch for the word - cheapen the American Presidential race. Our civil liberties will all be stopped by a few media giants. Curtains www.g21.net. I'm off to sell my soul to Rupert Turner.

If you want to make any money in the 21st Century it's content, stupid! Otherwise, why would I be doing this with my great brain rather than sitting with Bill shovelling around uncountable bushels of 0s and 1s?

There will be a succession of near monopolies as the information age steadily moves off the screens of the gurus and into every house in the developed world but nothing will last. Chairman Mao may have wanted, at various times, a thousand flowers to bloom and a "Permanent Revolution" but, sadly for him, the hidebound hat of China's state planned economy was incapable of producing an annual rabbit, let alone countless numbers thereof; but we shall not stop turning out all manner of creatures from all manner of hats for as far ahead - say, fourteen and a half years - as anyone can see.

As usual, there will be short-term problems. Unless publications like this spend more energy on regional news gathering, the somewhat narrow and superficial agenda of global media corporations will dominate; but, then, we already know that their kind of "news" is simply a branch of entertainment.

As monopolies assert so new developments will undermine. Should a temporary stasis occur through a yet to be seen conjunction of factors, there will be quite enough oddballs, anarchists and undirectionally creative people to ensure that plurality remains healthy.

My advice, for what it's worth, is that journalists of all kinds and conditions should spend much less time worrying about oppression and much more time practicing accuracy. What is killing journalism in our age is not political oppression nor global capitalism but laziness.

Investigative journalism is almost dead because it is too expensive in the competitive world of style supplements and op-ed columnists; ignorance, not least of past events, ruins perspective and makes the trivial appear novel and dramatic; and the decline in the methodical training of journalists leaves editors prey to the marketing executives so that global village coverage is cosy and imitative. The press is threatening the freedom of the press; the media executives are threatening the freedom of the media.

I shall not bore you with my time as a newspaper copy taker in an office of ink and scepticism, of hot lead and warm politics, except to say that not a single journalist on my town newspaper would have believed a single word, without checking, from the Chairman of the Public Parks Committee, let alone the self-justifying nonsense of official spokespersons.