If you go online for news, you are part of a growing plurality of Americans who do so. Almost half of U.S. Internet users, 48 percent, now use the Internet for news, about the same percentage who use it for entertainment, according to a May 2002 survey by MORI Research. 

And despite the proliferation of news “content providers” on the Internet, studies show that people are increasingly turning to newspaper sites for their online news. While CNN, MSNBC, and Yahoo! News top the list, nine of the Internet’s top 20 most popular news sites are run by newspapers. 

Since anyone can now enter the information marketplace, and since there is already a panoply of new information delivery systems, we have to wonder how we will be getting our news in the future—say in 5, 10, 15 or 20 years. 

Will hard-copy newspapers and their local news-gathering horsepower still be around? Will news consumers be primarily readers or primarily viewers? 

We’re not alone in wondering what the future will bring. There has been a flurry of studies and special reports examining everything from the potential market to the technologies and the economics. The studies were conducted by the NAA [http://www.naa.org], the Online Journalism Review [http://www.ojr.org], the Media Center at the American Press Institute [http://americanpressinstitute.org/NewsFuture], the American Society of Newspaper Editors [http://www.asne.org/index.cfm], and New Directions for News [http://www.newdirectionsfornews.com], as well as numerous research firms.

The newspaper industry is contending with some worrisome trends—a decline in daily print newspaper circulation, little interest from younger audiences, transfer of loyalties among some readers to the Internet, and a recent economic downturn that has affected advertising revenue.
 

Signs of Change
Years ago, newspapers started experimenting with online delivery as a fringe activity, primarily as a reaction to a perceived marketplace threat. Now, online services are well integrated into the mainstream of newspaper operations and strategy, and emerging trends show us where the future is leading.

Here are some examples of these trends:

• New fees for new kinds of services. Many newspaper sites have already begun to charge for archived articles. Some, such as The New York Times, have begun to “package” news archives and video clips on popular subjects, such as sports or authors, and charge a flat fee for each package. Barriers to charging for information are coming down. An NAA study found that at least half of those who purchased something online are also users of online news.

 
• Converging delivery systems. Our neighborhood electronics outlets already carry “smart” telephones that combine phone communications with personal information management and wireless data communications, along with hand-held personal digital assistants that can browse the Web. We can already watch television and listen to radio on our personal computers. Content providers have already begun to design services specifically for these converging media delivery systems.

 
• Multimedia “programming.” Newspapers are already teaming up with television stations to broaden their access to multimedia resources. However, the uptake of broadband, required to deliver quality multimedia content, has not been as rapid as industry experts had hoped, and broadband is expensive at both ends. Only 16 percent of U.S. households now have connections to the Net. So, newspapers are managing with existing technologies.

 
• Services for wireless and other mobile devices. Now reaching only elite markets that can pay for both retrieval device and a content service, downloadable and wireless editions of newspapers are becoming available for the Palm or Pocket PC. The industry has also developed an experimental wireless local news gateway, Lngate.com, which links users to participating newspapers, and is discussing packaging and marketing options with communications carriers.

 
• Facsimile editions. Digital replica editions read via a computer, for which subscribers pay separately, are becoming increasingly popular. These may be the forerunners of the portable digital newspaper.

 
• Independent competitors. Technology is making it possible for individual writers to post their opinions on current affairs. Web logs, some of which challenge majority media news coverage, are becoming more numerous as well as popular with Internet users. Awareness of them has grown since the 9/11 attack when Web logs proved more capable of covering and building community around rapidly changing events. Newspapers are beginning to co-opt the form by supporting Web logs written by popular columnists.

Visions of the Future
An NAA forecasting process begun in 1999 concluded that these electronic newspapers could be a bridge between print and newer delivery systems that would not only attract new readers but would avoid some of the printing and delivery costs of traditional publishing.

Among the fascinating forecasts about life in the future by luminaries whose writings were scanned for the Horizon Watch initiative, those of Roger Fidler were most closely related to newspaper futures. 

According to Fidler, a former director of new media for Knight-Ridder who now directs the Institute for CyberInformation at Kent State University, we will see the eventual complete transformation of newspapers and magazines to digital media, either through online publishing or on portable, magazine-sized “tablets.”

Newspaper “tablet” editions will incorporate audio-video clips, and digital editions will incorporate community forums enabling readers to interact with journalists and community leaders. Content will be marketed in branded “packages.” Intelligent agents will routinely find and filter cyber-information to match individual profiles.

Paul Saffo, who directs the Institute for the Future, sees the emphasis in news services moving toward context or point of view rather than on content alone. In his scenario, consumers will be willing to pay for “context engines” and individual news analysts will license their viewpoints for use in these search engines in exchange for royalties. Saffo believes people’s use of the Internet will shift from people seeking information to people “accessing other people in information-rich environments,” according to the Horizon Watch summary of his ideas.

In the scenario projected by participants in Advertising Age’s Future Forum, advertisers, marketers, and editorial services will “meet” in an open forum it calls the “consumer-driven zone.” Consumers will have complete control over the advertising messages they receive. New kinds of “infomediaries” will facilitate interaction between consumers and advertisers about products, services, and related issues.

The newspaper industry is particularly excited about the prospects for “electronic paper,” which promises to offer more in flexibility, formatting, and portability than any of the other electronic delivery devices. In development at several corporations and anticipated in the market by 2005, these foldable sheets of plastic material can be used in the same ways we use newsprint today. The exception is that it can be continually updated through wireless communications and can display video as well as audio.
 

Hurdles to Cross
There is still some lingering doubt about whether newspaper organizations as we know them can survive this period of vast technological transition and thus whether they will be around to play the leading roles most forecasters expect. 

Here are some of the hurdles that have to be crossed:

• Solving the economics conundrum. The popularity of online news sites does not always translate into additional revenues, either from readers, who are reluctant to pay for what they think they can get free elsewhere, or from advertisers. Recent surveys, however, seem to indicate that online newspapers are doing much better than just a few years ago, when very few of them were actually profitable.

 
• Fee vs. free. Over 12 million consumers paid for online content in the first quarter of 2002, according to the Online Publishers Association. Year-over-year sales of news alone rose 55 percent, according to the same study, but revenues are still small. Pornography and gambling aside, about 1,700 Web sites now charge for online content, a $675 million business in 2001. While The Wall Street Journal [http://wsj.com], the pioneer in this information-for-a-fee market, was the only newspaper in the top 25 money makers, in second place after real.com, six other news providers were on the list.

 
• Cannibalization of print editions. Despite the success of online newspaper sites and the trend toward their profitability, there has been a decline in weekday readership of hard-copy newspapers among Internet users, according to a Clark, Martire and Bartolomeo study in 2000. This raises the issue of whether ad or content revenues from online sites can make up for losses from cannibalization. Local and national TV have been negatively affected by Internet use, but weekday newspapers have been affected more.

Moving Toward Synergy Between Digital and Print
Despite the challenges, we can safely assume that most newspaper Web services will not only survive but expand and become far more interesting in the future.

Today’s newspaper publishers, who are already embracing electronic publishing and interactivity with their readers, have come a long way from believing that new media are a threat to their business. In fact, many see them as an essential opportunity. The more publishers adapt to new technologies, the more they will attract younger readers who are now less involved with newspapers as with television and the Internet. That’s good news for the home consumer.

As MediaNews Group CEO W. Dean Singleton noted at a recent industry conference covered by the AP, the industry is aware that the Internet involves a “massive transfer of power” that is changing the relationship between reader and publisher. “We need to be part of this shift,” he said. “We need to be so immersed and intertwined that we are both a driver of change and a beneficiary. And we do that by accelerating and refining the synergies” between the Internet and print publishing.

Rob Curley, director of new media at the Topeka Capital-Journal, says news sites will not be something you visit but rather something you experience, requiring publishers to have all kinds of “definitive” archives, video, message boards, outside resources, and even unedited text. 
“I want to give our writers more tools to better help them tell their stories,” he wrote in a contribution to the “Future of News” section of the Online Journalism Review, “and I want to help our readers gain a better understanding of the subject because of it.... It’s all about giving everybody everything they could want to know, and letting them step into the story, but putting it all together in a very intelligently laid out, easy-to-navigate way that’s user friendly. Yes, it’s overkill ... but it’s overkill with love.”

Now, that’s something to look forward to.