The Hindu : Front Page : Murdoch upbeat on future of newspapers

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Tuesday, Nov 18, 2008
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Murdoch upbeat on future of newspapers

SYDNEY: Media magnate Rupert Murdoch says doomsayers who are predicting the Internet will kill off newspapers are “misguided cynics” who fail to grasp that the online world is potentially a huge new market of information-hungry consumers.

Newspaper companies in the United States and elsewhere are facing fundamental changes to their businesses as more people get their news from the Internet and other sources, and advertisers follow the market away from the paper-and-ink format.

Mr. Murdoch, the Australian-born chairman and chief executive of News Corporation, said in a speech broadcast on Sunday titled “The Future of Newspapers: Moving Beyond Dead Trees” that the Internet offered opportunities as well as challenges and that newspapers would always be around in some form or other.

“Too many journalists seem to take a perverse pleasure in ruminating on their pending demise,” he said in a speech, recorded in the U.S. and relayed by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

It was the latest in an annual ABC series of lectures by a prominent Australian.

Mr. Murdoch grew a small city newspaper he inherited in 1953 into one of the world’s largest media conglomerates that now includes 20th Century Fox, Fox News Channel and Sky Broadcasting, Dow Jones & Co. and the online networking site MySpace. — AP

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