PSoTD

Jim Brady, Executive Editor of Washingtonpost.com, was asked the following question:

At this year's World Economic Forum in Davos, a panel of futurists claimed that print newspapers wouldn't exist by 2014. To what extent do you agree with this?

Statements that broad are bound to be wrong. The Washington Post will absolutely exist in 2012, as will other big newspapers like The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. I do think you're already seeing midsized and smaller papers deciding to go the Web-only route. If you look at current online revenues, all newspaper companies are still struggling to make money on the Web. But since the publishing costs online are microscopic compared to print, and with newsprint costs going up many newspapers are figuring they can save a lot of money by going online-only.

Again, such a broad statement is absolutely wrong. But there will be a lot of newspapers in the next 5 years that go web-only, in the US at least.

The question was about 2014, Brady assured only that the Washington Post would be around in 2012. Hmmmm.