BusinessWeek has proclaimed the death of the “Mass Market” in the U.S.

With the rise of tertiary cable channels, ultra-specialized magazines (my current fave: Physicians’ Travel), and the Web, advertisers are increasingly moving to media that target specific audiences. Caught in the resulting fiscal death spiral: Network TV, local TV, and daily papers.

Perhaps you won’t miss the days when half the country watched the same sitcoms, and 80 percent of households received “the paper” (typically a dully-written, Republican-partisan sheet) every day.

But if Procter & Gamble or General Motors wishes to no longer support general-interest journalism, who will? Not web ads, not sufficiently, at least not yet.

A lot of us lefties have had our beefs against the news coverage from the networks and the daily papers this past year and a half. To a great extent, the big media’s superficial, authority-driven war coverage was driven by the twin drives to keep costs down and to gain readers/viewers with spectacular stories/images. Thus, the mania in 2003 for “embedded” reporters, who got to cover the war up close as long as they saw and said what the White House wanted them to see and say. Undercover, investigative stuff is much more labor intensive, and doesn’t guarantee any flashy payoff.

As a long-term-unemployed journalist myself (will someone out there please hire me please?), I’ve seen the long-term effects of this shift in ad support. It’s undoubtedly the real reason the Seattle Times wants to end its joint operating agreement with the Post-Intelligencer. It’s the real reason chain-owned radio stations are decimating their news departments, and national magazines are buying fewer freelance articles. It’s a trend that won’t be fully reversed even when the general economy improves.

So what’ll save quality news in the U.S.? Pledge drives? Church subsidies? Foreign imports?

I haven’t the answers. If you have, lemme know.