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Will the Guardian still be here in 20 years?

Posted in Media, Digital, Arif Durrani, Latest reporters' blogs May 12th, 2008 by Arif Durrani

Irascible media commentator Roy Greenslade has been creating waves on the other side of the world this month, scaring Australia’s newspaper men silly with his gloves-off vision of media convergence and the future of the printed word, or rather the lack of it.

Around 20 years is the lifespan the City University journalism professor indirectly places on the Guardian newspaper.

Supported by a quote from editor Alan Rusbridger, Greenslade has been talking freely in Sydney about how the Berliner presses might be the Guardian’s last. Presses rarely last longer than three decades, making the newspaper’s demise apparently imminent.

In its place, the former editor of the Daily Mirror foresees a future based around a single screen “that can do everything”, in terms of media. 

“Newspapers are dead,” he told ABC Radio, before conceding that perhaps a paper of record could survive in most societies, albeit “largely unread by most people”.

“Newspapers have been very bad, because we didn’t see the future and we thought everything wouldn’t change in the way that it has,” he added.

The number of adults reading at least one national newspaper in the UK has fallen 24 per cent in the last decade, according to the National Readership Survey, with the biggest decline among the younger adults.

The comments come as the Guardian’s parent company GNM unveils plans to integrate its journalism output across print and online when it moves to new north London offices at the end of the year.

The new model is said to have been borne out of much collaboration and consultation, with Rusbridger noting: “Newspaper newsrooms are great for producing newspapers, but we can do so much more with the rich specialist resources across the Guardian, guardian.co.uk and the Observer.

“It’s not a time for cutting back; it’s a time to unlock the creativity at our disposal.”