More provocative thoughts on newspapers

Tim McGuire of Arizona State University lays out his thoughts on the newspaper industry’s future in a provocative speech. I totally disagree with him on some points, but I love others (cutting the price of the Sunday paper, for example or the stupidity – my term, he’s a little nicer to the industry – of cutting content when you’re losing readers). What he does say is that content is driving to the web, readers still want mediated news (I think that’s going to be more important in the future), and, most important, that the readership is ahead of advertising in that advertisers are abandoning newspapers while readers (some of them, but a significant number) still want their paper newspaper. There’s a lot more, and the speech is worth reading.