Future for Newspapers Online Remains Bright, Executive Says

ap ^ | 8/16/2002 | John A. Bolt

[TLBSHOW]

Future for Newspapers Online Remains Bright, Executive Says

DAVIS, W.Va. (AP) - Despite predictions to the contrary, newspapers can have a bright future as technology-driven information companies, a top industry executive told editors and publishers Friday. Acknowledging that "things are getting very strange out there" economically, W. Dean Singleton, vice chairman and chief executive of MediaNews Group, said, "It's time to charge, not retreat. ... I'm a believer that the payoff on the Web is there, it's just waiting for us to discover the right models.

"We are well-positioned as the cornerstone of media convergence when the chains of cross-ownership are released next year," he added, referring to expectations that the Federal Communications Commission will remove restrictions on joint ownership of broadcast and newspaper outlets.

"It is indeed a delicious irony that the oldest communications medium is emerging as the most modern, most high-tech and most successful," Singleton said.

Some have predicted that the Internet and the World Wide Web would undermine newspapers' future.

And Singleton said he once agreed with those who predicted the Internet would be a fad and have little long-term impact, but described himself as a "reformed skeptic."

"It all comes back to the power of our local connection," he told attendees at the annual convention of the West Virginia Press Association. "We've begun to demonstrate how our local connection promotes our strength on the Web and secures our standing in the market.

"We're starting to understand that reading a newspaper and surfing the Web are not 'either-or' propositions."

Denver-based MediaNews is the seventh-largest newspaper group in the United States and owns the Charleston Daily Mail. Singleton also is chairman of the Newspaper Association of America and a member of The Associated Press board of directors.

Singleton pointed to studies that indicate Web users are also newspaper readers and that Web use even leads to newspaper purchases.

The Internet "is a massive transfer of power. As more people have access to more information, the relationship with those who used to own and dispense that information is dramatically altered, and I don't care whether that's your doctor, your president or the publisher of your local newspaper," he said.

"We need to be part of this shift," he said. "We need to be so immersed and intertwined that we are both a driver of change and a beneficiary. And we do that by accelerating and refining the synergies between" the Internet and print.

He also acknowledged that the "first wave" of the Internet blind-sided newspapers and they need to be ready for the next wave.

"This wave reaches well beyond the Web," he said. "Peer-to-peer computing, digital newspaper, new generations of mobile computing, all of these are part of the next wave. If we don't put them to work, someone else will and we'll be scrambling to catch up again."

While newspapers need to aggressively try new things, he said, they cannot forget what they do for a living, "which is to serve readers."

[j271]

While newspapers need to aggressively try new things, he said, they cannot forget what they do for a living, "which is to serve readers lie."

[IronJack]

"We are well-positioned as the cornerstone of media convergence when the chains of cross-ownership are released next year,"

Meaningless bargle. This is newspeak rendered by a group that is terrified of their own lapses, and sees the looming spectre of Oblivion in the near future. Through their incompetence and arrogance, they've made themselves irrelevant. And we're supposed to believe that that's just what they wanted ...

Uh huh.

[grasshopper]

The chains of cross-ownership are released next year, he added, referring to expectations that the FCC will remove restrictions on joint ownership of broadcast and newspaper outlets

Sounds like freedom is near.... broadcast and newspaper outlets will give exactly the same BS.

[MinuteGal]

For the first time since the founding, the arrogant bastartes who buy ink by the barrel are losing control. William Randolph Hearst must be rolling around in his fiery coals.

The publication and dissemination of news, once theoretically a noble profession, is no longer the exclusive domain of the moguls.

Once liberals and leftists gain control of any of our country's institutions, they eventually destroy it. There are no more prime examples than the newspaper and education business.

Leni