Vem skulle du fråga? Här har svaret

Om jag skulle fråga någon om framtiden för medier skulle jag fråga en person som har haft mycket framgång inom nya publicistiska medier. En sådan skulle kunna vara Rupert Murdoch som har byggt upp News Corporation med tv och dagspress på flera kontinenter. Här finns ett tal som Murdoch höll nyligen på en konferens i regi av American Society of Newspaper Editors. Murdoch, som trots allt är över 70 år, visar sig vara mycket insats i fotarbetet och nuläge på Internet. Några godbitar (ganska många faktiskt...):

• "Internet portals, are quickly becoming the favored destination for news among young consumers"
• "They (unga målgrupper alltså, förf. kommentar) want control over their media, instead of being controlled by it"
• "Yet how many of us can honestly say that we are taking maximum advantage of those websites to serve our readers, to strengthen our businesses, or to meet head-on what readers increasingly say is important to them in receiving their news?"
• "The data may show that young people aren’t reading newspapers as much as their predecessors, but it doesn’t show they don’t want news. In fact, they want a lot of news, just faster news of a different kind and delivered in a different way"
• "In short, we have to answer this fundamental question: what do we – a bunch of digital immigrants -- need to do to be relevant to the digital natives?"
• "Some newspapers will invest sufficient resources to continuously update the news, because digital natives don’t just check the news in the morning – they check it throughout the day."
• "We need to be the destination for those bloggers. We need to encourage readers to think of the web as the place to go to engage our reporters"
• "To carry this one step further, some digital natives do even more than blog with text – they are blogging with audio, specifically through the rise of podcasting – and to remain fully competitive, some may want to consider providing a place for that as well"
• "In the same way we need to be relevant to our readers, the internet provides the opportunity for us to be more relevant to our advertisers"
• "Unfortunately, however, I believe too many of us editors and reporters are out of touch with our readers. Too often, the question we ask is “Do we have the story? rather than “Does anyone want the story?”
• " And the data support this unpleasant truth. Studies show we’re in an odd position: we’re more trusted by the people who aren’t reading us. And when you ask journalists what they think about their readers, the picture grows darker. According to one recent study, the percentage of national journalists who have a great deal of confidence in the ability of the American public to make good decisions has declined by more than 20 points since 1999"
• "This is a polite way of saying that reporters and editors think their readers are stupid. In any business, such an attitude toward one’s customers would not be healthy. But in the newspaper business, where we rely on people to come back to us each day, it will be disastrous if not addressed"
• "We may never become true digital natives, but we can and must begin to assimilate to their culture and way of thinking"