Guardian Editor: Some Newspapers Will Die Without Subsidy

Guardian editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger, who has already reshaped his paper in to one of the most ambitious reformers, offered his latest thoughts in a talk last week at Berlin’s Institut für Medienpolitik; here’s the video and some highlights…

“There is going to be a great shaking out in the next 20 years – there will be fewer big media organisations. The people who are doing serious journalism have to accept that that is not sustainable. In this interim period, where print is going (down) and digital is going (up), and there is a gap in the middle, bad things are going to happen where newspapers are going to die, there are going to be fewer journalists and the really pricey business of quality journalism is going to require subsidy from somewhere. It’s a broken model … you can cling on to that model but, in the end, you are just going to fall off the edge of a cliff.”

Rusbridger also delivered a lecture at Queen Mary, University of London – audio here, summary here.

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