Dave Winer foresees the end of “the media”. Why? Because they’re intermediaries and the internet doesn’t need them:

Why do you think they call it media?

They’re middlemen.

In the future we won’t need middlemen.

Why?

Because the Internet disintermediates.

Which is a fancy word for “gets rid of the middlemen.”

Or, if you prefer, “gets rid of the media.”

All that’s left when we go through [Web] 2.0 and 3.0 and 4.0 is nothing but information and people and lots of more efficient ways of connecting them.

Of course, that supposition is based on an interpretation of the word “media” as “middlemen”. Blogging is personal publishing so doesn’t need an intermediary to do its stuff except for a physical connection and a software platform.

But, as Syntagma has found, once you get serious in blogging, you become more like the media. You become a publisher of other people’s work as well as your own. In effect, Syntagma became Syntagma Media by a process of osmosis and by extension into territory more usually held by the MSM.

We’re not exactly “mainstream media” yet. But Weblogs Inc almost certainly is.

Dave’s argument is correct semantically, but falls down in practice. We’re not going to get rid of the media while there’s a professional job to be done.