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May 29 2008 12:58PM EDT

Future of Newspapers: Place Your Bets

Rupert Murdoch thinks newspapers will be around another 20 years, newspaper editors are largely optimistic about their business, all while the industry is falling apart like a 1986 Ford Taurus that's never left Buffalo. Time for a betting pool or something.

At the D6 conference in California, Murdoch dismissively responded to a question about the future of newspapers: "Print will be there for at least 20 years, and outlive me," he said. Of course, he didn't say that print will thrive for 20 years -- just that it will stick around that long.

Meanwhile, a worldwide survey of newspaper editors found that 85% of them were optimistic about their industry's future. "Of the 704 senior news executives who participated, 31% said they were very optimistic and 54% said they were somewhat optimistic. That compared with 24% and 61%, respectively, in the last survey compiled in late 2006," England's Guardian Web site wrote. (Ironic, huh, that I'm quoting a Web site...) Which means that about 40% MORE editors are VERY optimistic this year vs. two years ago. This despite newspaper circulation dropping, ad revenue sinking and newspaper company stocks going off a cliff.

Then we've got consultant Mark Potts predicting that newspapers have to suffer through six more years of declines in the paper product before on-line revenue catches up and helps news operations grow again. That could be true, but it ignores the fact that a whole lot of news operations might die before they get from here to there.

So where do you place your bet? 

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