The future of newspapers is the realm of uncertainty.
Two facts (Jeff Bezos purchase of the WP and Nate Silver leaving the NYT keeping the FiveThirtyEight.com domain) and two comments (by Jeff Bezos and Paul Krugman’s blog):
“…The Internet is transforming almost every element of the news business: shortening news cycles, eroding long-reliable revenue sources, and enabling new kinds of competition, some of which bear little or no news-gathering costs. There is no map, and charting a path ahead will not be easy. We will need to invent, which means we will need to experiment…”
(from: Jeff Bezos on Post purchase, Washington Post, Aug., 5, 2013)
“…Somehow the economics of this new world have to be worked out; but they are definitely problematic. Someone like Nate can become a celebrity and cut free of the middleman; but the people reporting on City Hall can’t, and we need those people too.”
(from: Nate Silver, Superstar, NYT, August 5, 2013)
