George Siemens talks about changes in the world of media in Centering Agents
Recently, the centering agents have come undone. I no longer read newspapers or watch the evening news. I used to go to one source of information to get a thousand points of information. Now, I go to a thousand sources of information to get one point of information. I have become the filter and mediator.
I also like that he doesn't specifically refer to blogs as his source of information, since it does not have to be. It could be any resource to which he has access, including the traditional "main stream media" that he finds himself using less and less.
The beauty of the new publishing paradigm is that I can choose what and when I read new information. Aggregators (AKA web feed readers, rss readers) give me much greater flexibility and customizability than I get with any newspaper or television program.
I still read the newspaper, primarily because I haven't found a useful combination of alternate sources for news that I can use. For ideas and conversations, I definitely rely on the web and blogs and discussion groups for input over anything that the main stream gives me. Even current publications, like Wired, are by default behind the times in what they publish for anything new and interesting. And, since my interests span genres, there aren't good filters for me anyway.