Are newspapers just a thing of the past?

On the way into work the other day there was a story featured on NPR about The Tribune Company filing for bankruptcy – this includes most notably the Chicago Tribune and LA Times (it does not include the Chicago Cubs).  The story primarily focused on how the Wall Street journal is changing since Rupert Murdoch bought the paper in the summer of 2007.  The WSJ, now a part of massive News Corporation, has been positioned to be a content distribution channel to other media outlets owned by News Corp.

The quote from the NPR story that really struck me is from Robert Thomson, Managing Editor at The WSJ…

“You think in terms of the cost of content as a once-only expense, and the potential
revenue of content is how much you’re able to repurpose that.”

News Corp media outlets include movie studios, magazines, television, newspapers, book publishing – and not just 1 in each category, but a whole bunch in each of those categories.   What Thomson was getting at is this – if you can have content generated at The WSJ and use that content in several areas (other papers, tv newscasts, etc) than the cost to create content for other areas in News Corp is now reduced.  So the obvious conclusion is that The WSJ can run in the red because it is simply an expense to News Corp’s other businesses.  Well… that’s not the official statement, here’s what Thomson said to that…

“… The Wall Street Journal has to make money to prove that they’re relevant, because if you’re not relevant, you’re irrelevant.  And irrelevance is unsustainable.”

Sure, that may be the company line, but I don’t really buy it.  I think The WSJ will be relevant because of it’s record of journalism and because it’s THE paper of record in the business world and on Wall Street.