Fascinating line of argument coming from none other than Mr Rupert Murdoch. What’s extraordinary is that he’s beginning to sing from the blogger’s hymnbook. Think that’s just more hype? Here’s the man himself:
The threat of losing print advertising dollars to online media is very real,” Mr Murdoch told the American Society of Newspaper Editors in Washington. He said his newspapers, which include the New York Post in the US and The Times and The Sun in the UK, had to find a way of bringing news to young people, who access news in an entirely different way.
“They don’t want to rely on a God-like figure from above to tell them what’s important, [my italics]” Mr Murdoch said. Not making these changes would mean the newspaper industry would “be relegated to the status of also-rans”.
He said that, although most newspapers had websites, most of these were “a bland repurposing” of print content. Instead, they had to become destinations, much as internet portals and search groups such as Yahoo and Google were today. As well as finding ways to incorporate blogs into news coverage, Mr Murdoch said it was important to link text with video.
You heard it here (or the FT) first!
Mick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and Europe. Twitter: @MickFealty
