Future of Newspapers

I enjoyed reading Monday's media Gaurdian's review of the year and in particular,its look at the year in newsprint.Will the newspaper still be around in 10,20,50 years time and in what form is a pertinent question for budding journalists.

Kim Fletcher gives the two views

"The pessimists say not, reporting a newspaper industry in terminal decline, dependent on the old economic model of advertising and circulation revenue and about to be destroyed by the internet."

"The optimists describe a trade that is capable of discovering unexpected flexibility and inventing new ways of making money. Using the language of modern management, they characterise the challenges posed by the internet not as threats but as opportunities."

He argues that the explosion in the free paper ,and here in Manchester we have a prime example, gives us the new business model

"But the economics of the frees takes us closer to new media and the internet, where journalism tends to be paid for by advertisers rather than readers. Until this year, newspapers debated the business sense in publishing stories simultaneously on paper for a price and on the internet for free. That argument has pretty much gone. The internet has encouraged the possibility that, one day, all papers will be free, whether they are on paper, the internet, a mobile phone or the medium we haven't yet thought of."

The Telegraph,of all the papers this year has made the transition form the slowest to embrace the new medium to one of the most up to date.

No one has invested more heavily in faith this year than the Telegraph, which has embraced the digital world with the zeal of Scientologists. The rhetoric has been dazzling, but the detail thin. To adapt the old gag: how do you make a small fortune from the internet? Start with a big fortune from newspapers.