When it comes to the future of media, the news is almost all bad. Hold on to that ‘almost’ for a moment, I will return to it. I will take you on a journey from Mordor back to the Shire in this piece, I promise.  Across the world, media of all kinds are funded by direct payments, subscriptions, advertising, and government subventions. Ad revenue has been sheared off the balance sheets of media firms. Research company WARC estimated advertising revenue is going to fall by 8.1 per cent – that’s $49 billion – in 2020.  WARC has data on media…