Before judging Klinenberg’s book by its, er, coverage, I’d suggest reading Peter DiCola’s “learned” (to quote Shafer himself) response to the article here:

http://fray.slate.com/?id=3936&m=18686383

Then get yourself a copy of Fighting for Air, where you can learn any number of fun facts that Shafer overlooked, like the UCLA study cited on page 72 that found “the larger the station’s owner, the less diverse its play, both internally and relative to its peers.”

To save you the “Washington read,” NAB is cited on pages 32, 71, 204, 247, 251-53, 255-59, 270, 281 and 294.

I’m sure you’ll be very interested in that.

http://www.slate.com/id/2157395/

As I read it Shafer’s article is pretty devastating to Klinenberg’s argument. He leaves out just about every salient fact that points away from media consolidation as the culprit. Sounds to me like Klinenberg went in with his assumption and ignored any evidence that indicated something else was going on.

I work for the NAB in DC, so I’m not what you’d call disinterested. Actually, I’m very interested.