Rupert Murdoch has forecast a gloomy future for newspapers with the growth of the internet, saying he doesn’t know “anybody under the age of 30 who has ever looked at a classified ad”.
The owner of the Sun, Times, Sunday Times and the News of the World, who once described newspaper classified advertising revenue as providing “rivers of gold”, now says: “Sometimes rivers dry up”.
“This is a generational thing; we’ve been talking about a 15- or 20-year slide on this,” the News Corp chairman and chief executive tells trade paper Press Gazette in a rare interview.
“If you take the number of page views in the US, we are the third biggest presence on the internet already.”
And this is not a gloomy future for the Internet?
A classic quote.
“It’s been my policy to view the Internet not as an ‘information highway,’ but as an electronic asylum filled with babbling loonies.”
Mike Royko
It’s a perfect solution for distributing music, since the music business is full of babbling loonies.
Jim Dermitt
I don’t tend to take much of what Rupert Murdoch seriously since he is one of the driving forces behind why the news media is just infotainment now. And well, everyone is well aware of the right-wing filth he pollutes his “news outlets” with. But I think he’s right with regards to newspapers. As the Internet becomes more and more accessible from anywhere, there’s soon going to be no need for a printed newspaper.
…saying he doesn’t know “anybody under the age of 30 who has ever looked at a classified ad”.
Does Murdoch know anyone, other then his children / grandchildren UNDER the age of 30???
As much as I dislike his “Fair & Balanced” ™ shows, it is nice to see that someone smart/canny enough to have built his empire is also still smart/canny enough to see the writing on the wall, and frankly admit the problem.
It doesn’t sound like he is in denial about the changes taking place. 🙂
I don’t know parallax… There’s something to be said for the printed word when I’m sitting on the throne relieving earlier indulgences. And there is nothing simpler than a book or paper… Besides, the worst “rags” are usually the least thought provoking, and therefore the best for loosening up…
Before the Internet replaces newspapers, it should replace junk mail that comes via the U.S. Mail. I throw out a bunch of junk mail every week. I doubt that the junk mail will stop any time soon. It may be around after the newspaper is gone. Maybe the junk mailers will all take over the newspapers and you’ll get your newspaper delivered for free by the mail carriers. I get enough junk mail to make up a small weekly newspaper. I don’t even read it. It just goes from mailbox to trash can. Then there are these free community magazines I get without subscribing to. More stuff for the trash can. At least with the Internet, you can ignore these people when they mail you offers via email. It’s not difficult finding good deals when you need something. Marketing is full of idiots, but with manufacturing way down people have to do something. Junk mail creates jobs for people who don’t have any skills. It also keeps trash collecting and landfills in business. This may be our last big manufacturing industry. Made in the USA junk mail, it’s an American institution.
I would agree that printed media is become substantially less prominent, but I question whether it will disappear all together. While it is true that I haven’t subscribed to a paper in over a decade, I do, on occassion, pick up a LA Times to read over a cup of coffee…and it reminds me why I stopped subscribing to newspapers. They’re a huge waste of material, they’re far from balanced, they only contain a small subset of the news in which I’m really interested and they can’t provide the ability to jump from one topic to the next at the click of a button. So, on second thought, maybe they are doomed.
I can not imagine morning without my coffee and paper. The price has plumeted in the last few years. the wsj was less then 100$ a year. it used to be almost 300$
Here’s a rather pathetic little op ed from Slate that provides a little perspective in contrast to this quote:
“But then the recently re-Webified Rupert Murdoch of News Corp.—a media revolutionary always a step ahead of his peers—arrived to buy Knight Ridder and the newspaper properties of the stagnating Tribune Company (Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, Newsday, et al.) and built the national classified database to end all national classified databases.”
Why am I seeing all these op eds that slag Google?
http://www.slate.com/id/2130795/
Yes, but can you wrap fish in the Internet?