There's something about media "trend-spotting" that sets me on edge.

In recent years, more and more media attention has been focusing on media. This may be the media equivalent of navel-gazing. But whatever you call it, the self-fixation often gets carried away.

I admit that I'm short on patience when the journalistic discussion dwells on such matters as forecasting "market share" and circulatory "penetration" of various media-industry sectors. But maybe the problem isn't the subject as much as the angles of coverage.

What's happening in the media world is a legitimate — even vital — concern for the future of news media and democracy. But the reportorial preoccupations with financial trends rarely seem to cut to the core questions of what those trends portend for civic involvement — and what they might mean for the health of the body politic.

In the media business, managers worry about the bottom line. That's understandable and appropriate. But journalists — like doctors — shouldn't be preoccupied with profits.

Unfortunately, overall, given the deteriorating quality of profit-driven health care, the comparison is apt. Too often we're disappointed — but when we go to a medical provider, we want him or her to concentrate on giving us the best possible health care. The same sort of professionalism should be paramount in newsrooms.

But many news stories betray a fascination with how corporate-media giants figure to navigate the swiftly changing technological terrain in order to consolidate assets and fatten the bottom line. The implications for democracy get short shrift.

For every time the spotlight falls on how the use of new digital technologies may affect possibilities for democratic discourse, there are thousands of instances where the bright media glare focuses squarely on business strategies that may generate impressive revenues for big corporations in the fast-moving realm of media consolidation.

Sometimes, the big-picture assessments of media trends are coming from organizations that avowedly seek to better the quality of American journalism. One such outfit, the Project for Excellence in Journalism, just put out its 2007 report on "The State of the News Media."

"The pace of change has accelerated," the report says. "In the last year, the trends reshaping journalism didn't just quicken, they seemed to be nearing a pivot point."

We're told that the report's authors "sense the news business entering a new phase heading into 2007 — a phase of more limited ambition. Rather than try to manage decline, many news organizations have taken the next step of starting to redefine their appeal and their purpose based on diminished capacity. Increasingly outlets are looking for 'brand' or 'franchise' areas of coverage to build audience around."

The report identifies "seven new major trends worth highlighting":

— "News organizations need to do more to think through the implications of this new era of shrinking ambitions."

— "The evidence is mounting that the news industry must become more aggressive about developing a new economic model."

— "The key question is whether the investment community sees the news business as a declining industry or an emerging one in transition."

— "There are growing questions about whether the dominant ownership model of the last generation, the public corporation, is suited to the transition newsrooms must now make."

— "The Argument Culture is giving way to something new, the Answer Culture."

— "Blogging is on the brink of a new phase that will probably include scandal, profitability for some, and a splintering into elites and non-elites over standards and ethics."

— "While journalists are becoming more serious about the Web, no clear models of how to do journalism online really exist yet, and some qualities are still only marginally explored."

Those few quotes, of course, don't do the report justice — you can find the full text at www.stateofthemedia.org/2007 — but it's fair to say that business models and financial market shares loom very large in how the report assesses the prospects for future excellence in journalism. That should concern anyone who believes that news media should be much more about making sense than making money.

Norman Solomon's latest book, "War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death," is now available in paperback. To find out more about Norman Solomon and read his past columns, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.