Matthew Davidson, a blogging graphic artist and musician, made this great statement at his Stretta blog:

Technology decimates media in the order of bandwidth. First, newspapers, periodicals, books. Text and pictures compress tightly, and are low bandwidth. Next comes audio. After that comes video.

It’s a interesting statement, especially when you see the carnage going on in the world of newspapers right now.

There have been a lot of people over the last few years that have thought that bloggers were going to get rich, because they could publish news and information at a fraction of the cost of traditional news sources.

Some were making the same sort of predictions in 2006, with the rise of podcasting.

There are obviously people making money with blogging and podcasting – but the hype around blogging and podcasting assumes that value of traditional media will transfer straight over to new media.

Technology is decimating the traditional business value of media.

Your local newspaper was a valuable business, because it was the most convenient way to get your news.

Now you’ve got a thousand sources for much of that news, coming at you through the Internet, to your computer, your phone and even your television. And newspapers are dying as a result.

And, as Davidson notes, Technology decimates media in the order of bandwidth.

As it gets cheaper to connect devices to the Internet and as the Internet gets faster, the barriers to media competition are getting erased.

In other words, radio and television will soon face the same pressures that now face newspapers.

People will get rich from blogging, podcasting and new media.

But don’t expect the billions spent on traditional media to move directly over to new media. Much of that value has already been decimated.