I won’t bore our non-journalist readers by recounting in any great detail the shop talk from IPI Conference here in Belgrade. But a couple of points that might be interesting to the broader audience.
The hand-wringing about the future of newspapers is not limited to the States. The consensus seems to be that, while U.S. papers are in much worse shape than European papers, the newspaper business model is collapsing in Europe, too, largely but not exclusively because of pressures related to the explosion of the Internet.
One observation I’ve heard made more than once is that European papers were better positioned to meet the challenges of the Internet age because they had learned long ago how to survive in a fiercely competitive marketplace. American papers, on the other hand, enjoyed near monopolies in their respective local markets for decades.
There is so much turmoil in the industry on both sides of the Atlantic that it’s not clear yet how things will ultimately shake out. A BBC reporter asked me to put a number on it: how many more years will newspapers survive? I hesitate to get into the predictions business, but it seems obvious that in another 20-25 years two full generations will have grown up consuming news exclusively online. Whatever print editions still survive then, at least in America, with which I am familiar, will not look anything like newspapers today. An old American newspaperman in attendance here remarked to me, archly, “I can’t tell if the U.S. is a leading indicator or a lagging indicator.”
Interestingly, the disconnect between publishers and journalists in their responses to the industry’s shifting financial fortunes is just as pronounced here as in the States. In a provocatively titled panel — “Are Profits Killing the News?” — William Green, the editor of Time Europe, was nearly at his wit’s end, although diplomatically so, in trying to get two major European publishers to acknowledge and address the cutbacks in news and the effect of the industry’s financial struggles on journalism itself.
Britain’s David Montgomery, CEO of publicly traded Mecom Group PLC, and Switzerland’s Michael Ringier, chairman of privately owned Ringier AG, would have none of it. They rejected outright the premise that journalism has suffered from declining news budgets, and argued to the contrary that the quality of journalism is better than ever before. Ringier was particularly pointed, dismissing some of the criticisms as “bullshit” and declaring that despite the hand-wringing about Rupert Murdoch taking over the Wall Street Journal, the quality of the paper had actually improved since his arrival.
Green, ever earnest, implored them, “Aren’t you in denial?”
