This comment by Waltroon was written in response to my posting Two-year comparison tells real story of national newspaper sales. I thought it deserved a wider audience, so here it is, without further comment from me:
I just googled "the future of newspapers" and 75,700 entries popped up. Most, so far as I could tell (and I only glanced at the first few pages), posited the view that decline is inevitable and gathering pace. So you are not wrong, Herr Professor: The Writing is on the Screen.
I think you'll be okay. There'll still be papers to write about for the next 15 years or so. But what of your successors? I suspect that the only "academics" still interested in newspapers beyond, say, 2025 will be be historians. In the same way that Richard Dawkins bangs on relentlessly about evolution, so newspaper historians of the future will write - lovingly and at length - about how The Guardian, The Times and Her Majesty's Daily Telegraph finally went the way of the dinosaurs.
The way things are today will come to be seen as a Golden Age - The Day of the Hybrid - when the resources of newspapers enabled news sites to present real research and finely-crafted writing as if they were their own. The Dark Ages will follow. Instead of The Guardian online and the online edition of the New York Times, there will be blogs, blogs and more blogs.
Given that we will have run out of oil, leading to a situation in which only the rich travel and only those with money know the truth about anything, the disappearance of newspapers will seem to be the least of our problems.
But as we move towards Mankind's Endgame (like Sudoko, but with consequences), little hand-turned presses will start up again, bringing hope to the oppressed masses, dreaming of Ibiza while wondering what lies beyond the next parish. And so it will all start again.
In the meantime, would the last one to leave the print-room please switch off the presses?
