Ballmer Sets a Newspaper Deadline: 2018

During a discussion with the Washington Post yesterday, Microsoft C.E.O. Steve Ballmer made a startling prediction: that within the next decade, dead-tree journalism would itself be dead.

"There will be no media consumption left in 10 years that is not delivered over an I.P. network," he said. "There will be no newspapers, no magazines that are delivered in paper form."

Ballmer's forecast might give pause to writers and editors--if they hadn't been making the same prediction for years. One of the best-known and most cited prophets of print's demise is Philip Meyers, who says in his 2004 book The Vanishing Newspaper that the last one will be printed in 2043.

Jeff Jarvis, director of the interactive journalism program at the City University of New York, thinks this generous. He writes, "What will newspapers look like in 2020? Well, what's a newspaper? That's what young people may well ask by then."

In a 1999 speech at Columbia's journalism school, Time Inc. Editor-at-Large Daniel Okrent likened print journalism to travel by horse and carriage, an old-fashioned technique made obsolete by new technology.

"The word 'Internet,'" Okrent said, "was all but unknown in the U.S. six years ago."

Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, wrote in late 2007 that "10 years ago I believed newspapers would last another five years. Clearly I am not qualified to make this sort of prediction."

But Adams didn't bet on the wrong horse; he was watching the wrong race. Buyouts and layoffs signal foundering, not failure. Newspapers won't die until a new technology crosses into the mainstream and kills them.

Adams envisions a cell phone with a retractable, "digital screen," and now thinks newspapers will last "until you upgrade your phone two more times."

Craigslist is often credited with wiping out newspapers by stealing one of their traditional revenue streams, classified ads. Its founder, Craig Newmark, says printed news will become "occasional luxury items."

Or historical artifacts? The "Newseum" that opened last month in Washington, D.C., drew the ire of Slate media critic Jack Shafer, who suggested the money would have been better spent endowing a newspaper.

Anabel Lee, writing in The American Prospect, calls the Newseum "a beautiful resting place for that final newspaper 35 years from now."

But for all the hand wringing, is the end of print really so bad? Beyond market exigencies, there's a strong environmental case against devoting so many trees to a disposable commodity.

Jarvis suggests chucking the whole system and starting over digitally: "Pick a date in the less-distant-than-you-think future and unplug the press. And then ask: What's a newspaper? What's its real value? And how does that value live on and grow past paper?"

Tim McGuire, a professor at Arizona State's J-school, echoed this argument in a speech in May to the Northwest International Circulation Executives: "If newspaper ink is in your veins, you desperately need a blood transfusion."

by George Quraishi

(Jeff Bercovici is on vacation)

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