Ten years from now
Online you can't be scooped
Slate's Jacob Weisberg
"Ten years from now I think there will still be printed newspapers, but the Times will be much further along in their migration to the web," he replies.
When this thing arrives it's going to transform books, newspapers and magazines and, if they figure it out in time, it's not necessarily going to harm them in the way the iPod has made things very hard for the music industry, partly because they don't have to repeat those mistakes and partly because it has the potential to increase their reach and audience, as well as offer, potentially, some very lucrative advertising opportunities."
However, intriguingly, Weisberg thinks there are risks inherent too. "It's the revenue model that everyone's worried about. The most basic problem is that newspapers are losing revenue now - display advertising is migrating elsewhere, classified is going, even movie-listings will go to the web - and there's the potential for that to accelerate.
"Papers like the New York Times have a very good, growing business in digital media, but it's a much smaller business and it doesn't have anything like the scale to support the newsroom, the bureau in Baghdad and the investigative reporters, all of which are very expensive. Even if you project real exponential growth on the web, it starts from such a small base that, as the newspaper becomes a money-losing operation, it takes too long for it to support the cost of the newsroom.
