Google Buying A Newspaper? Not.

Google's Schmidt nixes idea of buying newspaper | Digital Media - CNET News. Suggesting that Google might buy a newspaper is like asking if Henry Ford's heirs were interested in buying horses and buggies. Newspapers have been migrating to the Web faster than rats deserting a sinking ship. I still read newspapers on paper; however, it is primarily a nostalgic exercise, or at Sunday breakfast, when the family tries to break my habit of being the first person to read each section. Newspapers will always have a place; journalism will still live in print, the real thing, and the web, like TV news, will be more immediate. The real problem newspapers will have with the new media, and the reason Google won't be doing any print purchases in the future, is that journalism can live quite well online, as in depth issues discussion is more a function of the journalist than of the medium. All bloggers are not true journalists; however, many journalists are becoming bloggers. It's a matter of the message, not the medium.

Comments

[Peter Huang]

It is amazing how disruptive (in both a positive and negative sense) the Internet has become in less than a generation of wide-spread use. One can only hope that the migration online is not going to destroy the deep investigatory journalism that newspapers do so well.