‘Newspapers will change, not die’

Media mogul Rupert Murdoch said that.

He added:

“Power is moving away from the old elite in our industry - the editors, the chief executives and, let's face it, the proprietors. A new generation of media consumers as risen demanding content delivered when they want it, how they want it, and very much as they want it.

This new media audience - and we are talking here of tens of millions of young people around the world - is already using technology, especially the web, to inform, entertain and above all to educate itself.

I believe traditional newspapers have many years of life left but, equally, I think in the future that newsprint and ink will be just one of many channels to our readers. As we all know, newspapers have already created large audiences for their content online and have provided readers with added value features such as email alerts, blogs, interactive debate and podcasts.”

So he believes the newspaper will continue to strive along side the new technology.

However technology guru Bill Gates has a different opinion all together. He believes in the very near future we will carry an object he calls the tablet, a slim device like a clipboard that will cater for all our information and entertainment needs. He says this tablet will revolutionise our lives within a decade.

This technological advancement, he says, would mean paper becomes a thing of the past and there are no textbooks, no magazines and no newspapers.

He adds:

“The tablet is the place where it can all come together. I definitely see the tablet, whether it's textbooks going digital or the newspaper going digital or magazines going digital, I see the person with that very, very thin, - we don't have it yet today - very inexpensive, high-bandwidth, wireless device... where a lot of the print and video consumption will take place."

However he does concede that it will be awhile before newspapers are totally gone – at least 50 years, he reckons.

"I'm sure it will be more than 50 years when somebody is still printing a newspaper and taking it to someone, somewhere… we are seeing the shift where younger people appreciate the flexibility of the internet to let them select the subjects that they have particular interest in, and to navigate links and see what's hot.

We are in the throes of a transition where every publication has to think of their digital strategy."

And thus the debate continues.