MySpace has announced it will partner with the print magazine Nylon to prerelease an online version of the mag with links to the MySpace pages of bands and others profiled in Nylon stories.  Sounds like a good idea.  The publication in question appears predictably vapid, but the model here could foretell similar agreements in the future.

The move brings to mind the thesis of Nick Carr, who predicts in his forthcoming book and current Gilmor Gang appearances that on-demand media and contextual advertising will decouple high-revenue low-value content from the low-revenue high-value content it has effectively subsidized in traditional media institutions.  (Think Britney Spears coverage selling the ads that then pay for the investigative journalism found in section A or F, whichever the case may be.)  Perhaps the analogy here is that MySpace's partnerships like this one with Nylon will help raise funds to help pay for the hard-hitting critical thought of Fox News.  Hmmm.... no it's probably an example of the kind of cultural destruction that Carr sees on the horizon.  Fluff will pay for nothing but profits and more fluff while journalism that, for example, challenges those in power, will become an underfunded, far less visible niche market.

One way or the other, agreements like this, the WaPo's Technorati partnership and now Time.com's embrace of newbie Sphere all point to a real blurring of the line between traditional and new media.  That doesn't even seem a relevant question any more.  It's about being smart, not about whether new forms of media will beat old ones.

MySpace/Nylon story via Alex Bard and WebProNews.