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The Future is Now
Exec: Future of Newspapers Is Online
Despite predictions to the contrary, newspapers can have a bright future as technology-driven information companies, a top industry executive told editors and publishers Friday.
Acknowledging that "things are getting very strange out there" economically, W. Dean Singleton, vice chairman and chief executive of MediaNews Group Inc., said, "it's time to charge, not retreat.
"I'm a believer that the payoff on the Web is there, it's just waiting for us to discover the right models," he said. "We are well positioned as the cornerstone of media convergence when the chains of cross-ownership are released next year," referring to expectations that the Federal Communications Commission ( news - web sites) will remove restrictions on joint ownership of broadcast and newspaper outlets in the same market.
"It is indeed a delicious irony that the oldest communications medium is emerging as the most modern, most high tech and most successful," Singleton said.
Some have predicted that the Internet and the World Wide Web would undermine newspapers' future.
And Singleton said he once agreed with those who predicted the Internet would be a fad and have little long-term impact, but described himself as a "reformed skeptic."
..."This wave reaches well beyond the Web," he said. "Peer-to-peer computing, digital newspaper, new generations of mobile computing, all of these are part of the next wave. If we don't put them to work, someone else will and we'll be scrambling to catch up again."
While newspapers need to aggressively try new things, he said, they cannot forget what they do for a living, "which is to serve readers."

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