It seems that everyone is predicting the end of newspapers. This essay was written as a response to a speech given by Rupert Murdoch on the topic of newspapers in a digital age. Mathias Döpfner, head of the Axel Springer media empire controlling over 150 newspapers in 32 countries, writes: “In 1990, Bill Gates prophesied that by the year 2000, there would be no more newspapers. He was wrong. In the year 2000, newspaper publishers around the world made the largest profits in their history.
“In spite of all this, the last few years have again been marked by a crisis: the great advertising, circulation, Internet and structural crisis. We media managers love crises. We compete to see who can describe the crisis in the bluntest terms. No one wants to be a dinosaur. Which is why we all present ourselves as extremely open to change and what Joseph Schumpeter called “creatively destructive.” Myself included. But we must be careful not to commit suicide out of a fear of dying.”
