A year of living dangerously abroad and at home

We learned, in 2006, that the world is not safe for the media.

That's not meant to be flip -- not entirely, at least. This was a year of business woes, of circulation slippage , and viewer erosion. But it also was a year when the physical dangers of reporting became clear, when the world understood how dangerous it is for journalists covering war.

In January, Bob Woodruff, the newly-minted co-anchor of " ABC World News Tonight, " was badly injured by a roadside bomb in Iraq, along with cameraman Doug Vogt. That same month, Jill Carroll, a freelance reporter for the Christian Science Monitor, was abducted by insurgents in Iraq, who killed her interpreter and held her for 82 days. In August, Fox News journalists Steve Centanni and Olaf Wiig were abducted in Gaza and held for two weeks.

That their ordeals commanded national attention was, in a sense, the only bright side of the story. There is still respect for good journalism, still a need for serious reportage. There just isn't the same ad revenue to support it.

Thus, belt-tightening and layoffs were the other overarching story of the year, as the Internet, abetted by corporate consolidation, continued to wreak havoc on old revenue models. Employees of " Dateline NBC " got pink slips. Locally, we bid a final farewell to the news crew of WLVI, whose station was sold and shuttered.

In magazines, Time Inc. announced end-of-year layoffs and put some of its titles on the block. And in newspapers . . . well, don't get us started. Let's just say there were layoffs both locally and nationally, and untimely departures from top to bottom. Dean Baquet, the editor of the Los Angeles Times, earned industrywide respect when he stood up to his paper's corporate owners at Tribune Co., protesting more cuts. Then he got fired, too.

It says quite a bit that the bad industry news could overshadow the salacious stuff. This was, after all, a banner year of egos buffed and bruised , as the networks played musical chairs with their coveted anchor slots.

Not long after Woodruff's injury in Iraq, his co-anchor, Elizabeth Vargas, announced that she was pregnant. Soon, she also announced that she was stepping down, setting off a wave of speculation over whether the decision was voluntary.

Her replacement: veteran anchor Charles Gibson, who got the star treatment -- his name in the show's title -- and the job of his dreams.

It all happened a few months before the most-highly-touted TV move of the year, when Katie Couric made her long-anticipated move to helm the " CBS Evening News. " The nation watched, rapt, as she donned a white blazer and asked viewers to suggest a closing line. The ratings spiked, for a week or two.

But before long, CBS was back to its usual third-place slot. And NBC's Brian Williams, who assumed his role in 2004 with far less drama and fanfare, was back on top of the ratings.

Elsewhere on TV, Meredith Vieira got a gushing welcome when she replaced Couric on NBC's "Today." The nation mourned Ed Bradley, the debonair mainstay of "60 Minutes," who died of leukemia in November.

CNN kept lionizing Anderson Cooper, whose most distinctive "get" was his fawning sit-down with a post-pregnancy Angelina Jolie. Fox News celebrated its 10th anniversary, attesting to the success of its take-no-prisoners formula. And Fox's larger-than-life personalities spawned some media stars in reaction, from MSNBC's Keith Olbermann -- who drew increased attention and ratings since he started to bash Bill O'Reilly -- and Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert, whose O'Reillyesque host is a virtuosic parody.

What's next? Look online. Newspaper websites are swimming with blogs; networks are putting their newscasts on streaming video. Amanda Congdon, who made a name on the video-log Rocketboom.com, got a streaming-video hosting deal on abc.com. In the future, convergence will come faster, for sure.

And maybe next year, someone will figure out how to pay for it.

Joanna Weiss can be reached at weiss@globe.com.