One of the biggest questions that we all seem to be asking a lot is whether or not newspapers as we know them will be around even five years from now. Folks really into the social media and Web 2.0 world would have us believe that newsprint is already dead but newspaper corporations won’t accept it as fact.

Another segment of today’s thinkers about this believe that while there will be a greater move to the online for newspapers there will always be some form of print news.

Robert Scoble had a really interesting interview with Mac Tully; President and Publisher of the San Jose Mercury News, where they talked about just this sort of thing (see below for the embedded video interview).

In the beginning of the interview where Mac was talking about how today’s economic climate along with the influence of the web has created a realy difficult situation

We have this whole sea change going on in the newspaper industry at the same time we have a worsening economic enviornment. either one of those two things can make your life hell; but those two things combined are really expotentially …. they’re just making the problem considerably larger.

- Mac Tully transcribed from his video interview with Robert Scoble

While Mac suggests that there are two major forces at work that is making the newspaper industry make some foot dragging changes I think there is also a third.

On the one side we have his sea change of events and on the other there is the obvious economic influences. The third one that I see might not seem like all that much but it is one that will grow and in the end dwarf the effects of the other two.

Newspapers, magazines and even books are all reliant on one thing – cheap paper. With our growing consumer base there will come a point where paper just isn’t a viable resource; regardless of how much they try and recycle resources already in play.

Whether it be because of it being a shrinking resource or the demand outstrips the availability, paper will become too expensive to waste on things like newspapers or magazines.

It might take longer for books but in the end when that same information is ubiquitously available via the web for a fraction of the cost; if not totally free, then newspapers as a print form will die. Until that point is reach; which it will – it’s just a matter of time, newspapers will continue to have some sort of print edition.

Where I do see a possible change; given Mac Tully’s two market forces example, is that the major news corporations make indeed make the move totally to the web. After all this is what the Christian Science Monitor; as well as a few of the big technology magazines, has done.

In the end it will always be about the bottomline. The moment they can get their heads wrapped around ways to really monetize their content and maintain their news integrity the presses will stop printing.

The newspapers I do think that will survive longer; or at least until the cost of newsprint becomes to prohibative, is the small town local papers. I wrote about this once before here at WinExtra and I still stand by what I said in that post

Even with the loss of a local identity though local papers are still very important to a small community. For many people in those communities this is their information lifeline for what is going on and I can use our household as a prime example.

I pretty well get all my news from the net and couldn’t tell you much of what is happening locally but on the other hand my wife Kim has no interest in computers or the net. For her the local paper is her information vehicle and she looks forward to the days it arrives at our front door and promptly reads it front to back – sometimes more than once.

In the end though local newspapers will go away – it is inevitable.

Robert’s interview with Mac Tully

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