"These hybrid giants are not plastics companies," he wrote. "The are not shoe manufacturers. They deal in ideas.... Will the Paramount deal merely make a brave new world safe for shoppers and for mediocre movies moving over an electronic superhighway? Or will the latest concentration of media power further cramp the free flow of ideas?"

Tom Goldstein was Dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1988 to 1996. Here he discusses media mega-mergers and the effects of new technologies on journalism. He was Dean of Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism from 1996 to 2002.

Q: First of all, let's talk about the mergers that are going on in the media today. You recently wrote an op-ed piece for the New York Times that pointed out something I had neglected to look at, which is the effect on the publishing industry. Could you talk a little bit about that?

There may be an effect on the publishing industry. What I was talking about was the proposed merger or takeover -- whichever it is -- of Paramount by QVC. One of QVC's partners is the Newhouse-owned company Advance Publications. The Newhouses own Random House, which, depending on how you count it, is the first- or second-largest book publisher. Paramount owns lots of things -- a movie studio, the New York Knicks, the New York Rangers, Madison Square Garden. It also owns what is now known as Paramount Books, which used to be Simon & Schuster. That itself is an amalgamation of several other publishers, including Prentiss-Hall, which is, iself, a large publisher; and, most recently, MacMillan. And that is either the first- or second-largest publishing house, depending upon how you count. So you've got a major investor in QVC, purchasing, prospectively, what is its major competitor. What the relationship is, we don't know. I mean, the Newhouse family owns their company; they don't have to talk. Even though they are in the media business, you would hope that they would sort of illuminate the public on what this means. It is my view that the fewer the voices, the worse off we are. But we just don't know, and that's what is so frustrating, with a lot of these deals. The Newhouses aren't necessarily partners, they are investors. To what extent, we don't know.

I think what has happened, what this reflects, is that for many years, there has been a shrinking of the number of media voices. Many people -- and I'm one of them -- saw in the new technologies an antidote to the shrinking number of owners. "Well," you say, "the new technologies are going to enable many more people to be players." Well, that has happened to a degree, but it now seems to be that the pattern is being repeated with the new technologies -- it is consilidating, with fewer and fewer voices. And there doesn't seem to be very much accountability. And I am disturbed. I think the possibilities of the "information superhighway" are enormous, but what seems to be happening is that the entertainment industry, or the entertainment aspects, are controlling, and we tend not to be told about sufficiently what other parts are going to be affected. I think there is a lot of over-promising going on about what's going to happen. And the consumer , the citizen, seems to be sort of left out. It just doesn't seem fair, or right. What I was trying to do in that piece, and it was a very short piece, is just to raise some questions. Why aren't people discussing these things more? It is being run in most newspapers as the strategy . this corporate struggle -- Barry Diller of QVC, who left a decade ago Paramount, under Davis. And he's coming back, and he's going to slay his antagonist. What the stock is worth; that's not saying, "What does it mean? What are the benefits of this?" Not only in terms of book publishing, but in terms of programming. I mena, there are many Paramount movies, and they're pretty third-rate. Is all this excitement about the information superhighway merely to provide movies? I think there is a disproportionate amount of excitement over movies. Now people don't have to go beyond their telephone. I would hope that there would be something more to this, that it holds out greater promise. It seems, without certain direction, that it is moving that way. And the Clinton-Gore white house is taking a great interest in this, and they are very lassaiz-faire, which I think, ordinarily, is quite fine -- leaving them alone, seeing what would happen, keep the dead hand of regulation away.

But they seem to have a hand in things, or at least the appearance of controlling things

It's not clear. They say for anti-trust things, the typical mechanisms of regulation are being eased off, and they want these things to blossom. But at the same time, Gore gave a speech just recently saying that libraries should have access [to the information superhighway]. That's all for the good, but if you're leaving it unguided, you get consolidated behemoths who are interested in delivering what is the most profitable, which is, I guess, movies, or shopping. That's just troubling. All I'm saying is, we need to know more information. Maybe it's not trouble. But no one is really discussing these issues in a coherent, sustained way.

Itn what ways could the new technologies empower people, as opposed to the big monopolies?

If they are easily available, and there are several steps away before they'll be easily and cheaply available. But it opens up absolutely new worlds of information and knowledge. It's just extraordinary. I'm just beginning to experiment with the Internet and some of the databases. I'm slow, but it's just amazing. I'm having a hard time with some of them, but I can see the enormous possibilties.

Let's talk about that a little bit. On the Internet, you have a lot more people getting their news from the Internet, it seems. How is that going to affect traditional journalism?

At the moment, while the numbers, while substantial, are still relatively small for the overall audience, but it is inevitably going to affect, especially your generation and the generations to follow -- they have no tradition, not a deep tradition, of reading newspapers. They get their information elsewhere. And once they figure out how to wed certain advertising techniques, I think, that may be a primary medium. Don't know; we're in a very interesting transition time. But newspaper companies have generally been slow in recognizing what is happening, and now it seems to be happening with a rush. I think there may be some sort of Hegelian dialectic to this; it may come back to a middle ground of development, because we're sort of rushing headlong sometimes without a purpose. Newspaper companies, if they're good, are going to stay around, because someone still has to gather, sift, and exercise news judgement. I mean, I have no interest in turning on the Internet when I come home, or when I wake up in the morning, to read debates, or to read the full text of everything. Maybe if it's something I'm particularly interested in, but in a newspaper, I'm paying someone to do that for me whose judgement I trust. So all this full text, this plethora, or wire service headlines -- I don't want that, I want something more. Maybe what some of the better systems that will be developed I think will give you levels of information; if you want one sentence, one paragraph, or in-depth. Someone's going to do that, and it's not going to be the full-text providers; the intermediary of journalists is going to be essential.

How has the Internet affected journalists, and the way that they go about getting information?

A certain few journalists are beginning to use it, to my knowledge. The traditional "man on the street," they can pinpoint people. There, again, it's largely generational -- people are more accustomed to answering their email than their phone, or submitting to an interview, and that's going to change notions of evidence and credibility.

The "information superhighway" seems to have become super-hype in the last few months. Why has it taken off recently? Is it the administration, the cable companies hyping it...?

I think it's a combination of a lot of those factors. I think the phone companies are afraid of the competiiton. The cable companies have basically matured in certain markets. The technology is pushing it. And there is an excitement at the white house, I think, that's promoting all this. You meet with a lot of people who say, "What's the information superhighway ?" Even around here, where there is a fairly high level of knowledge, there is a bafflement as to the specifics.

How about the metaphor of the highway? Do you think that is accurate? Do you think it is overused?

I'm not sure it works. In its initial metaphor it works, but once you get into it, I'm not quite certain it is useful.

How about the Internet? When you get on the Internet, do you feel like you're going somewhere physical?

Personally, I feel like I'm expanding my choices, then I'm narrowing them. I don't view that as a highway.

Are different media treating this story of the superhighway differently? Newspapers were originally opposed to the phone companies getting involved in this; now they seem to be merging with phone companies.

Well, they were opposed editorially, perhaps, or in a business sense. But I think there have been extraordinary changes just in the last couple of years, and there is almost a panic mentality among some -- "If our competitor joined up with a newspaper, we'd better join up with a newspaper." Or, if you're a newspaper, "We'd better do it too even though we're not quite sure how it's going to work." No one wants to be on the dance floor without a partner.

It seems like journalists used to be afraid of the Internet growing and taking over their role. Are they becoming less so?

That's hard for me to guage. Those who use it comfortably, use it. But there are still a lot of people who don't know what it is, don't have access to it.

You talked a little bit about interactive news, or kind of a personalized newspaper. Is that going to work? Are people going to use that, or do people need an editor?

I think there will be an editor, I think you'll be able to sift. There are various types of programs that already exist. You can program your own interests. And I can also see the possibility, if you're interested in the New York Times, or the Washington Post, to see what the front page looks like. You may be able to buy that. Or you may be able to buy serendipity. There could be "Kevin Walker's Serendipity," and people would say, "I like his sense of humor," or "I like his judgement, I'll buy him." And you'll be serving an editing function. So I think that there will be intermediaries in that regard. But then, I don't think people are going to spend enormous amounts of time on it.

When I was thinking of this whole idea of interactive news, it really caused me to redefine what is news, on a personal level. Did you find the same thing?

Part of what is happening in the last several years, and I think it's going to accelerate, is a different notion of what news is. The problem, which I think is quite serious, about what Steward Brand labeled "the Daily Me," in his book about the Media Lab, is that the mass media serve an important function. It is important that people are informed on a base number of items. That is cause for concern.

It seems to me that news is something that affects someone personally, yet the most popular stories -- this was the year of "trash TV" and all these outrageous stories. What do you predict for the coming year? Is it going to get worse?

In fact, I think not, because I think they've peaked, and their audience numbers are going down. There is probably a saturation level that has been reached and passed.

Back to publising for a second. How do you think electronic publishing will affect book publishing -- CD-ROMs and things like that?

I think it will change it fundamentally, because people who have not grown up on printed pages are going to find that easy, compatible. Rather than trying to find something, you can use a search function -- there are tools that will help research, reading, casual reading. But then, I'm much more comfortable sitting in a chair reading a book. And that experience, I'm not sure how that can be duplicated with a CD-ROM.

The journalism school co-sponsored a series, this last Fall, about multimedia. How did that go?

It was interesting. We're beginning to bring in people; one of the nice things was to bring in people from other parts of the campus who were thinking about this in very different ways. There are great resources at a university, who people might not, ordinarily, be talking to. We began to understand that we are very close to the library, and I hadn't thought of it quite that way. Libraries, museums -- very different skills.

Who were some of the best speakers?

Roger Fidler, who was here last Spring -- he works for the Knight-Ridder newspaper chain, and he's trying to develop a new newspaper, on a tablet. Very interesting stuff. At least theoretically, he has a lot of answers to some of the issues that have been raised, and he gave an extremely reassuring presentation about it

Is the journalism school going to start to teach these new, interactive technologies?

In some way. Basically, we don't know how to do it yet. But we appreciate that they are coming, and we also believe that the fundamentals of journalism will be called upon no matter what the medium of distribution is.

And you think that traditional journalism will persevere.

The techniques, certainly. The form of distribution may change