"The reason for the increase? Visionary traders are predicting that everyone will eventually tire of the Internet and go back to waiting for their news until the next day."

The same visionary traders that believed the housing market would forever continue it's 8% appreciation climb per year, right?

LOL, news on paper. how 20th century.

"...everyone will eventually tire of the Internet and go back to waiting for their news until the next day."

Yeah, this whole internet thing is a fad. Excuse me while I go listen to Grand Funk on an LP and send a message to my mom using a telegraph.

They are going to make it on there online edition. The paper copy is dead.

Profits fell, but newspapers are still making profits. So maybe that = good investment these days?

That was also the argument a few years ago, in addition to the good cash flows of newspapers. I don't know if that's true or not, but it got mentioned a lot. Maybe it's still true?

[www.newsweek.com]

It's interesting reading something on this topic from 2006. Feels like deja vu.

@SanDiegoDude:
People who want to get their news with a little more depth still get it on paper - glossy paper. And they wait a whole week or a month to get it.

My understanding is that the publishing companies above make their profits on their smaller community papers - not on the money losing flagship assets. Local merchants & chains must advertise even in bad times and in depressed regions. Local community papers with cheap syndicated content and some local news more than make up for costs with ad/flyer revenues. "News" & content are just a means to an end to maintain the circulation numbers.

Considering the billions of dollars in market cap that Murdoch's companies have lost, HE'S giving US financial advice?
I'd rather listen to Bernie Madoff.

Try lining the bottom of your bird cage with the Internet.

@H3ion: +1

lol wut?

@H3ion: There's lots of places you can buy newsprint paper, like craft stores. Which won't work if your bird likes to read.

Typically, attention span decreases. Good luck with expecting people to slow down and be all, "Yeah, I can find out tomorrow, that's alright".

@wgrune: I'm going back the days when we didn't have answering machines. Every phone call you made was an exciting mystery.

And if possible, I want my phone number to start with a letter.

I'd consider News Corporation thriving in a few years as a remote possibility... except that Murdoch expects News Corporation web sites to start charging for their content in some way, shape, or form within the next 12 months.

If they're smart enough to only charge for archives over a week/month old, they'll possible survive. Otherwise, no.

@SanDiegoDude: You're making a serious mistake if you think that the low-tech concept of 'news on paper' is going away completely. In my opinion, that's just a step away from saying that we don't need physical books or libraries anymore, and that would border on absurdity.

Newspapers and newsweeklies have obvious flaws in dealing with breaking news. But not everyone will rely on a digital brick to get their news or information. The long form features and commentary (that only need to be timely and not necessarily instant) aren't going to read well on an iPhone or a Blackberry, no matter how good those devices get. That, and you aren't going to get as miffed if you leave your Examiner in a cab than if you left a smartphone or a laptop--both of which need constant re-charging and paid-on-time subcription fees to work properly.

Your local 'News', 'Herald', or 'Examiner' still has plenty of utility left as a local, semi-daily version of Newsweek or Time for your metro.

@DrGirlfriend: Absolutely. Part of the wonder of an actual physical newspaper or a newsmagazine is that you are much less likely to skip over articles unless you truly have no interest in its subject matter. At the very least, you'll read the first few paragraphs or sentences that are staring you right in the face, then you'll continue reading based upon your level of peaked interest. There are a lot of things/subjects I'd have never caught of an interest of otherwise.

Online? Well, you don't have to click that link if you don't wanna...you can skip stories completely. It would be interesting to see a study done on news knowledge of newspaper readers versus that of people who got their news solely online or through TV.

@BlazerUnit: Technology is the answer to this problem. In the next 10 years you are going to see an electronic paper alternative that is throwaway.

Instant gratification will never die especially with Cable TV news still in the mix. Who wants to read the story they saw on CNN yesterday?

@DrGirlfriend: I'm going back to the days where my 8-track (the Paul Stanley solo album) paused briefly during the middle of a song ("Take Me Away (Together As One)") so that I could take a bathroom break.

@BlazerUnit: I think on average, I browse at least five news sites a day and I read at least two papers on my commute. I try to do it daily, but it gets hard sometimes if I'm just not in the mood to read. But I still see a place for local daily newspapers that do local reporting. I can find out what happened in New York City from any number of sites, but for really good detailed coverage of how my local city hall decisions are affecting my life, I find the best sources to be the local papers. I think there needs to be a return to the personalized nature of newspapers, before journalism as a business started to look like a Monopoly board, with corporations buying up big chunks of the market.

There will be a newspaper renaissance. Our kids, the ones raised in the internet/twitter/bluetooth age, are going to "discover" newspapers. All the device-driven news is going to be stuffy, old fashioned and boring...just like us. As the "older generation" everything we do will be majorly lame, absurd and embarrassing - that includes our manner of receiving news. The next generation, when it rejects us completely, will embrace the tangibility of the newspaper and it's ability to have a "local" voice whereas the news over devices will be seen as generic and abbreviated. It'll be "cool" because we fogeys don't "get it" and because it is a physical thing it will be seen as more genuine and significant.

Remember you read it here. (On the internet)

@oneandone:

It's true, because advertisers still want to reach people who still want a daily newspaper thrown on their driveway. And there are still a lot of them because, surprisingly, for a lot of people the world doesn't revolve around the internet.

Eventually, however, that generation will die out, and you might see a newspaper once or twice a week, and Sundays. When? 20 years? 30? Nobody knows. Every newspaper company knows this, but as recently as mid-2007 - a time by which you would have suspected newspapers would already be dead - profits were still quite healthy. But papers felt the recession first, and will feel the improvement first as well.

I have a job at one. Still! The few, the proud. My paper are on target for a 20% profit margin this year. Yes, 20%! Yes, this year! But I am not wearing rose-colored glasses about it: the future is online and we all know it.

it's all about the local papers. i know we've seen a bunch of big city papers crying bankruptcy lately (the most recent evidently being to strong-arm labor - shame on you, boston globe!), but this is largely happening in cities that have multiple media outlets. the towns i live & work in don't have tv news stations. sure, there's the occasional "dead body found in river" story that headlines the 11 o'clock, but every day local news doesn't make it to new haven, waterbury or hartford.

the big problem (as i see it) is that as large investment firms gobble up the local twon criers & seek to squeeze as much money out of them as possible, skeleton staffs are resorting to more & more national/regional syndicated content. & that's precisely what most local newspaper readers are NOT looking for. they want to know why the fire engines woke them up at 3am, why they saw a lifestar chopper at the high school, who died, who got a DUI last nite, who punched who at last nite's town meeting, etc., etc. the sooner news companies realize this, the better, b/c if they keep shrinking local news coverage, they're going to see correlated drops in readership & advertising dollars.

The newspaper here has a website, but it's poorly organized and I can't find a thing on it. I still subscribe to the actual paper but only on weekends and holidays.

I find, however, that when I read the paper on the weekend, half of it I've already read online. I would cancel, but I do love reading the circulars and the little USA Weekend magazine with my coffee on Sunday.

As long as there are bathrooms and guys there will be newspapers.

Yeah, the Inernet kills newspapers like radio killed newspapers, movies killed radio, television killed movies, Internet killed television, books, movies and music (oh, wait...) and so on.

The survivors are the ones who can adapt. The weak die. Newspapers will take a different form, but won't die.

Get the new format right and make billions...

@DrGirlfriend: I'll go back tot he days when my phone number had a single digit.

"6? No, this is 3, dammit!"

@wgrune: When I wonder why our economy is in the state it is, I just remind myself that the people in charge of it had to have flunked business 101. Saying people will tire of the Internet is like saying people will tire of having sex.

BREAKING NEWS!

The sexual position formally known as 69, is now referred to as 96.
Due to the state of the economy, the cost of eating out has now gone up.