I was listening to an NPR report Wednesday about the media, and a caller asked how people will get turned on to new ideas -- in addition to just using search engines to find exactly what they’re looking for. The answer from the guest, who had a background in daily newspapers, made me chuckle. He said people will still have to turn to their local newspapers for that kind of “discovery.”

If you haven’t spent much time using the Internet, the comment might make sense, but I thought his answer indicated a basic misunderstanding of what the Internet is and what its future looks to be.

Anybody who’s visited the iTunes site – and that’s not a small number of people – knows that Apple offers a wealth of suggestions and even specially packaged music. And because we can buy music by the song rather than by the album, you could argue that it actually expands the opportunity to discover new artists because you don’t have to put all your music-buying eggs in one basket.

Internet ecommerce pioneer Amazon.com is also known for its suggestive selling, offering a variety of user reviews, lists of what other books people who bought a given book had also purchased, and the like.

Of course, the number of online vendors doing this kind of selling today is too numerous to mention.

Then there are the large video libraries offered via the Internet by companies like Akimbo, CinemaNow, Google Video, Netflix and others. They’re able to offer both the hit movies and programs that fit into the “short dog” category, and the smaller or more special interest programming that would be considered “long tail.”

But I guess I’m focusing just on the for-pay entertainment and programming on the ‘net. What about the free stuff?

Well, as you know, tons of newspapers, magazines, blogs and video sites like YouTube are available. I guess you need to know where to go, but the point if you can get the same “discovery” from an online article or publication that you could from a hard copy newspaper. (Although, like me, some folks prefer to read hard copy at times for its portability and aesthetic value.) Plus, it’s easy for search engines and the content sources themselves to offer suggestions on other materials and take you right to it via a hyperlink.

While I thought the NPR guest’s response about “discovery” was off base, one salient point he made during the discussion was how the future of newspapers is in local coverage – what’s happening with local schools, events, potential threats in the neighborhood, and the like.

This made me think about all the talk in telecom about the importance of local programming relative to IPTV service differentiation. But from what I heard, most of that consists of providing access to video of the local high school’s football games. What would really be interesting would be if IPTV providers somehow offered exclusive and well-packaged content related to the communities to which they sell services – not the sound bite, blanket community coverage already offered by most local papers, TV and radio stations, but truly useful, very localized content.