Some buyers still bullish on newspapers
Rupert Murdoch and others see potential in the industry's digital-age transformation.
from the June 28, 2007 edition
Page 2 of 3
"Newspapers are not dead, but the trends are quite negative," says Rick Edmonds, media business analyst at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla. "It will probably get worse for another 18 months or so before it gets better."
The private-equity firm of Veronis Suhler Stevenson is forecasting revenue growth in the industry of 1 or 2 percent for the next few years and then another period of falling revenue.
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"The newspaper industry is definitely in a period of transition, and its traditional form is flat and shrinking," says Jim Rutherfurd, managing director of the New York firm.
Yet newspapers are also prime purveyors of information – still something that people want, says Steve Davis, chair of the newspaper department at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communication at Syracuse University in New York.
"I still don't think anyone rivals newspapers for the resources they can marshal in that service," says Mr. Davis.
Daily newspapers are also ideally suited to reflect the complexities of life, says Sir Harry Evans, former editor of The Times of London. "All human life is there," he writes in an e-mail. And, he adds, much of a nation's agenda is still set by newspapers, with television often following the lead of the press.
Despite these strengths, however, newspapers will have to reinvent themselves, Davis says. "Our business is not dying. It's changing dramatically," he says.
In fact, one change is the ownership of the industry. Davis says he grew up at a time when the person running the newspaper was a journalist. "Now, there is a trend in our business where the person steering the ship is a business-first mind versus a journalism-first mind," he says. "That's a big change, a profound change."
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