I was just reading a dispatch from blogger-correspondent Mariane Matera about one more journalism conference with one more round-table discussion about which media would prevail and why we still need the old guard so badly, and I had two very different but equally strong reactions. On the one hand, I got a real kick out of Matera's biting sarcasm as she reported the event as a verbal boxing match. On the other, I was disappointed to hear the same arguments, the same sad fears, rehashed one more time.

I think this debate over whether old media will be replaced by the Web is becoming tiresome, and it occurs to me that we could at least stand to refresh the terms a bit.

Newspapers are threatened.
Televisions might also be threatened.
Radios, too.

But text will be around forever.
Video will be around forever.
Audio, too.

Or at least as long as we have eyes and ears to consume these things.

Telegraphs once shot text across the country. Did big media cling to the telegraph out of some misplaced sense of nostalgia when the telephone was born? Did reporters say to themselves, "You know, I'd rather telegraph my editor today?" Foolishness.

The debate needs to shift away from this unfounded fear that somehow content has become an endangered species. Radios will be around as long as people want to receive their news hands-free. Of course, the iPhone can just as easily stream radio. So what? The jockeys and the talking heads can remain sitting on their duffs delivering audio content. They just need to buy new equipment.

The future might be terrifying to those who make it their business to manufacture or control a particular distribution channel. Fine. But if the distribution methods are in danger, it is because there is a faster, cheaper and more efficient means of blasting out the information. And by information, I mean the content: text, video, and audio.

Adaptation is the name of the game. Big media (aka Mainstream Media, aka MSM) have the advantage of money but the disadvantage of bureaucracy. As long as they manage to stay on the cutting edge of distribution, they should survive, because there will always be a healthy demand for good video, audio and text producers of content.

How journalists get paid for producing that content is another matter, and all of us who want to earn a paycheck for full-time reporting might understandably be worried. But the solution is out there. In the meantime, we need to get off this merry-go-round of complaints about old versus new media. Content is content, and that's that.