As we move into "that time of year," the media hustle slows down and news departments start looking to repackage their best stories, photos and footage for year-end retrospectives. Oddly, many still can't agree on whether 2000 is the first year of the new millennium or the last year of the old one.

I am less interested in recycling old news and more interested in reflecting on its meaning.

Here at MediaChannel, it's been a year of trying to figure out how to make sense of and communicate media news and perspectives that go beyond the gossip and "insider" blather that is the stuff of so many Web sites and publications. Much of our work is driven by a sense of alarm, a deep concern about the way many media outlets seem to be undermining democratic participation rather than strengthening it, distracting public opinion rather than informing it. In our columns and in selections from our affiliate network (which has grown from 190 sites in November 1999 to 563 this week) we've offered a robust mix of diverse opinions and subjects from all over the world. It is heartening to know that there is a growing number of groups and individuals who understand that transforming media may be a prerequisite to transforming society. They realize that media power is real power and that media not only report on issues but are in themselves an issue — or should be.

As I review my own dissections over the past year, I see certain subjects and trends that helped define the year.

1. The New Economy  It is hard not to write about the Internet when you are yourself are working in it. As MediaChannel went online as a not-for-profit venture, we were constantly being laughed at by our more avaricious colleagues, who were singing the praises and briefly enjoying the riches of the dot-com bonanza. Remember those days. In an early column I wrote: "An [initial public offering] a day seems to keep the market in play, as Internet deals continue to hit the jackpot, fueling new e-commerce-driven sites and generating crops of instant gazillionaires."

Yes, we were jealous, even though we knew that the whole Internet at that time was effectively a dot-org, and very few in the New Economy were making money. Most were burning out at an absurd rate. In that same column, I also noted that "this bubble is bound to burst." I asked: "Why are so many falling for these overvalued online schemes and scams? Why are they shoveling billions into the virtual void?" I called it "a textbook example of the irrationality of capitalism." My thinking on the subject was guided by the pronouncements of the great American economist John Kenneth Galbraith about whose ideas I hope to be making a film next year. "There aren't too many things you can be sure of," he says, "but when someone says that economic prosperity is here to stay, you should run for cover!" Within months a lot of people were running when the bubble did burst. The economic viability of the Web was one of the big media issues of the year and will remain one in the year ahead.

2. Media Concentration And Mergers  At year's end, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission voted 5-0 to approve the awesome merger of the already gargantuan Time Warner and America Online. The social and political impacts of this merger and other huge business combinations, including the Vivendi Seagrams deal and the Bertelsmann-Pearson marriage, are worrisome and will remain so. Ten years ago, 50 companies dominated the media in America. Now it's down to about six. As we enter the age of convergence, and as the broadband capacity of the Net gets broader, will all voices still have access or will corporate-think and media-speak be even more pervasive?

3. Media Freedom  Far too many journalists are still killed in the line of duty and face censorship and repression. In one column this past year, I reported on the significance of the demonstrators in Belgrade who targeted the state television station as well as the Parliament. Unlike many media-freedom groups who focus only on abuses elsewhere, I am especially passionate about challenging corporate censorship and self-censorship in Western countries. We were delighted when retired TV news anchor Walter Cronkite spoke out on this issue in his statement of support for MediaChannel: "We have all been supportive for years of dissidents around the world who take great risks to stand up for what they believe in. But here at home, in our own industry, we need to make it possible for people to speak out when they feel they've been wronged, even if it means shaming newsrooms to do the right thing."

4. Safeguarding The Internet  The fight over freedom for the Internet has been a persistent theme but has until now mostly revolved around privacy issues amidst growing corporate and state surveillance. Now there is a new danger, at least in the United States. In other countries — or example, China — government censorship continues, with more nations anxious to follow Beijing's model of government interference. In the United States, there's a new danger: the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is attempting to limit nonprofit use of the Internet by "clarifying" the ways in which nonprofit organizations can or should design their Web sites. Among the issues in question are: whether or not information linked to a nonprofit site can be attributed to it; soliciting funds using the Internet; advertising or selling merchandise on nonprofit sites; using the Net for political lobbying or advocacy; keeping Web sites up to date; and using listservs, including possibly attributing comments and responses to a nonprofit organization. [OMB Watch has reprinted the IRS concerns.]

5. Media And Democracy  My columns this year have ranged over the relationship between media and democracy, dealing with elections in the United States and elsewhere. The coverage of politics reflects political choices. My main point has been that the media increasingly shape how and what we think about in the political sphere, specifically about elections.

Speaking of democracy and its absence, most of the observations about the U.S. elections seem prompted more by the outcome than the coverage, although it is gratifying to see that I am not alone in expressing distaste for many media treatments. It is significant that writers for mainstream publications are also outraged (although more after the fact than during the electo-thon that just ended). In The New York Times, Caryn James lashed out at the TV coverage that is "more opinionated, more fraught with attitude" and for an audience that has "less and less reason to trust those attitudes." And why? Because the "anchors and commentators maintained a relentlessly hysterical tone, an apocalyptic attitude far removed from the general public's." New York magazine media writer Michael Wolff described the coverage as an "information swamp" dominated by "television dodos. ... [E]very single blowhard who has gotten on the air has been wrong about basically everything. _ Nobody can be trusted. Nobody is able to offer credible interpretations of motives (partly because their own are so suspect)." I'd like to think that I am not part of that "nobody," but Wolff's larger point is more worrying — that an election was stolen, but now it's back to business as usual. He decries media indifference.

Now I'd like to pass on some information shared with me by a high-level mucketymuck at MTV who revealed which U.S. media outlet was correct about the election's outcome. Take a guess. No, not the networks or CNN and the rest of the cable news cabal. It was Nickelodeon, the children's channel, which polled its youthful, nonvoting peanut galleries. They got it right, picking Bush, and apparently have maintained a 100 percent accuracy record in predicting national elections. And if that is not strange enough for you, check out this quote (the accuracy of which I can't vouch for), which is bouncing around the Internet:

In 1555, Nostradamus wrote:

Come the millennium, month 12,
In the home of greatest power,
The village idiot will come forth
To be acclaimed the leader.

6. Resistance And Protest  The emergence of independent media centers and resurgent media activism is another theme of the year, an encouraging one because it demonstrates new interest in the faults of mainstream coverage and a new commitment to providing alternatives. I have written about what I see as its strengths and limits (News Dissector: August 2, 9, 16; September 27).

7. Media Coverage  How issues are covered is at the heart of the media debate, with controversy focused on what's left out, how stories are framed, and inadequate follow-up and contextualization. I have delved into the coverage of the U.S. election as well as media controversies in Peru (the Lori Berenson case, the Middle East and China (Falun Gong)).

A final note, to remember and pay tribute to some fallen soldiers in the media war. Two of my colleagues at Globalvision, who gave so much to our "South Africa Now" and other human rights programming, left us: Rosko, the legendary New York radio announcer and voice-over artist, and Carolyn Craven, old friend and anchorwoman of the series. I also mourn the passing in Mozambique of Carlos Cardoso, a friend and as brave a journalist as there was, and Daniel Singer, the brilliant political analyst who was one of our advisors.

Finally, having just seen the moving film "Dying to Tell the Story" about photographers on the front line, like the late and brave photobug Dan Eldon who was cut down in the flower of his youth in 1993 in Mogadishu, Somalia, we have to realize that serving the cause of truth can be dangerous, but that there is no higher calling.

Happy News Year.

NEXT WEEK: How To Fix The Media. MediaChannel readers look ahead. I'll open the column to comments from readers and advisors. Bear in mind that you can add yours by writing to me (dissector@mediachannel.org) or posting in our forum.

POSTSCRIPT: Ooops. I suspected it was too good to be true: The Nostradamus Web site says that the quote cited above is a "chain letter hoax." But then again, so are some of the political developments I've been discussing.

AS THE MEDIA WATCH THE WORLD, WE WATCH THE MEDIA.

The Media Channel is a not-for-profit project of OneWorld Online and The Global Center, and is produced by Globalvision New Media.

The P.U.-litzer Prizes of 2000.