You don't have to know very much to know the sad future of the newspaper. Just as long as you think of the newspaper in its current incarnation, it has no future.
However, the newspaper in a new incarnation has a great future. I hate to do this, since I virtually never give business advice to anyone but a client, but I will describe the future for my readers because I don't have a current relevant client and don't anticipate one.
The future of the newspaper is the
newsroom. It will be a main office in New York, Washington DC, London or Tel Aviv,
one of the news centers of the planet. The newsroom will have
sub-offices in a few other capitols and many stringers. There will be
no sales offices. Sales will be part of independent companies that
work for the separate media.
The function of the newsroom will be to
take in all relevant news stories in a variety of media. The stories
will be a mix of commissioned and unsolicited.
The function of the newsroom staff will be to format the stories into the various appropriate media. The media will pay for the newsroom service. All media will be paying for the service which will provide the story in the appropriate form: radio, TV, Internet, press, magazine, journal etc.
Picture the future newsroom in Tel
Aviv. A story comes in from Salt Lake City about the mayor having an
ear replaced after being attacked by a bear. The story comes from a
stringer. The stringer is told to get video immediately. The short
report is written up for the Internet and a quick voice segment is
added to the revolving radio feed.
When the video gets back it is broken into a small segment for the Internet, a larger segment for the global TV feed and the radio feed gets live audio added. A photo and background column is prepared for the press and a small insert is made available for the weekly magazines.
That is it. The same story is sold to every medium. That is the future of the newspaper...the newsroom survives.