A very interesting piece in the most recent Economist on the future of newspapers in the face of the internet. One of the main problems they point to is that newspapers haven't taken their electronic presence seriously, either in terms of content or organization. The Tacoma News Tribune has responded to the challenge in part by unleashing a whole host of blogs--14 at last count!--and they seem to unleash a new one a week. This seems more like unfocused desperation than a real strategy. In the end, newspapers may have to confront a post-"dead tree media" world:
"For most newspaper companies in the developed world, 2005 was miserable. They still earn almost all of their profits from print, which is in decline. As people look to the internet for news and young people turn away from papers, paid-for circulations are falling year after year."
Read the article here.
Update: A piece from the New York Times on the decline of Knight-Ridder.
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