Newspapers of the Future

Upon reading Romenesko today, I found a link to a story on the Web site Investor's Business Daily about what newspapers of the future will look like. According to Doug Tsuruoka, newspapers will actually resemble the online sites that the papers have, which are currently considered supplements to the paper.

So in the future, it will be the papers that supplement the Web site.

Tsuruoka mentions that newspaper companies will soon begin to publish their content online and then offer free paper editions that have small stories and contain ads and layouts that resemble an online newspaper Web site. He says:

In five to 10 years, analysts predict, most U.S. newspapers will have moved to the Web with e-editions. Though national dailies like the New York Times and USA Today are expected to keep their main print editions, lots of other papers will have more readers online than at newsstands. Most will still publish smaller, specialized print editions that are digests of what they post online.

Imagine that. So far, newspapers have survived the onslaught of the World Wide Web because it is still accepted as the best source for news. However, if and when newspapers embark on this journey to become online newspapers first and print newspapers second, well, then it'll become a whole new ballgame.

For me personally, I just hope that papers really don't design their pages after Web pages. I think a lot of Web pages are ugly.

Tomorrow will be my last post for this blog. At that time, I will explain why.