The Demon Barber of Fleet Street?

The Guardian says:

Former Financial Times editor Andrew Gowers has poured scorn on newspapers, claiming they will become as obsolete in the future as vinyl records.

Why would he say this? Oh:

Mr Gowers...left the newspaper last week following a dispute with the Pearson chief executive....Mr Gowers, who was editor of the Financial Times for four years, refused to explain what "strategic differences" led to his departure from Pearson.

Mr Gowers went on to accuse "at least half of what used to be called Fleet St" being in denial about the impact of the internet.

The thing is, I don't really disagree with him, but there are less bitchy ways of expressing this. One quote jumped out at me, though:

"The future lies with the internet, and those newspapers that survive will be those that produce truly original content and learn fastest how to translate it into the all-encompassing, all-singing, all-dancing new medium of the web."

"New medium"? Uh, buddy, the Web is a decade old. But he misses the point. What will really put the nail in the coffin for printed newspapers is when, thanks to ubiquitous Wi-Fi, Web-based content becomes as portable as print and, if/when e-paper takes off, you have a portable electronic device that has the same basic form factor of a printed newspaper (for those who want that), but can display current information accessed wirelessly.

And this is not because we're becoming a gizmo-obsessed culture (although we are), but rather because by the time a newspaper is printed, what's in it is largely old news (except for features), and in today's--and especially tomorrow's--world, we need/want information/content immediately.

Now, what may very well happen is that someone may leverage the power of digital, on-demand printing, so that "newsstands" become kiosks that download the latest news and print a newspaper one at a time, as needed. This isn't science-fiction; many books are printed this way.

I say this all as someone who always used to either read or subscribe to a daily newspaper (the Boston Globe when I lived at home, the Daily Orange when I was at Syracuse, the New York Times when I lived in New York, the L.A. Times when I lived in L.A., and the Albany Times-Union when I moved to Saratoga. I occasionally picked up the Saratogian, but the typos drive me crazy, and there was one week a couple years ago when every issue was plagued with font substitutions (I could make a newspaper Courier joke but I doubt anyone would get it). Now, I very rarely get a print newspaper; I check out a whole slew of national/international news sites and blogs and the (lame) Web sites of the Times Union and Saratogian for what meager local news they decide to post. It's just more convenient to check out CNN.com or Yahoo News, and the news is fresher and more current. The only vestige of my previous subscriptions is that I still subscribe to the New York Times Crossword Puzzle--oh, and which I print.