And many of changes are quite encouraging.

Importantly, it was mainstream, serious media – in the form of The Washington Post – that broke the story about Trump’s bragging about his propensity to engage in what can only be termed as sexual assaults.

But it was a new iteration of mainstream media because the Washington Post journalist who broke the story, David Fahrenthold, tweeted the headline (“Trump recorded having extremely lewd conversation about women”) and the thing went viral immediately.

The Washington Post site carried the video.

It was a classic example of the new media environment. A respected traditional newspaper website carries video, sent to it, presumably, by some outside source. It is posted as soon as it is verified. And the posting is immediately tweeted so is picked up almost immediately by other media outlets.

Pictures, video and words come together. There is no need to wait for the overnight printed version. The internet is used to advertise the story. The video was sent so easily to the newspaper.

But when all said and done, it was the Washington Post’s stamp that gave credence to the video’s authenticity.

If the video had been posted to someone’s blog it would not have had the same effect.

The New York Times has also broken significant stories about Trump.

Mainstream media remains society’s main source for credible authentic news and comment – comment and analysis that can inform and change readers’ minds, rather than mindlessly preaching to the converted with froth and babble .

Some mainstream outlets have fared better than others. But in any event consumers have benefited. Subscription costs for publications behind pay walls are often less than a quarter of paper costs for a product that gives searchable access to archives and is far better organised than the paper version.

Some remain free and thrived. The Guardian, for example, once a small British outfit with readers numbered in tens of thousands is now a worldwide publication with readers in the millions.

In the new media environment, the newspaper sites have often joined with broadcasters in major investigative journalism. Fairfax’s co-operation with the ABC is a good example.

So, despite the internet’s significant impact on traditional print media’s advertising and circulation revenues, it is clear than these mainstream journalism publications have survived and thrived, commanding more readers and as much respect as before.

In many ways they have quietly benefited from the internet by becoming much more efficient. The newspaper library is a thing of the past, at least for words. Journalists do their own searching and the database is automatically updated electronically – a huge staff saving. Image archiving, however, still requires effort.

Gathering news is also much more efficient. Email, voice mail, Skype and mobile phones sure beat landlines without answering machines.

Word-processing and uploading to the net sure beat typewriters, linotype machines and printing presses.

Editing is also more efficient. Spell and grammar checkers (properly used) help. Also, there is no need to worry about editing for style consistencies, such as US, British or Australian spelling, given any Google search will have a mismatch anyway.