• Journalism.co.uk, Wednesday, March 22, 2006 1:04 PM

It's not often that a senior executive in the newspaper business willingly admits what others often whisper in quiet corridors: when it comes to breaking news--and sometimes even less urgent matters--the Internet is more and more the place readers can find the latest, best-sourced stories.  The exec here is Alan Rusbridger, editor of The Guardian, who made his brave, bold comments in a speech before the Royal Society of Arts in London.  "We have reached a point where the newspaper is in the middle of a fragmented world of interest groups aligned around zones of politics and passions and geography," he said. Readers are now self-selecting and will pick out the in-depth information they want while ignoring the rest. "They are not wrong, these people. The Internet now does a lot of information on all sorts of subjects better than newspapers. I shouldn't be saying this live to the world outside--I should be keeping this a secret. But a lot of people have twigged to this."  Newspapers that pretend that the Internet doesn't exist will "eventually fall off a cliff," Rusbridger told his audience.  Sites that his industry brethren must pay particular attention to, in his view: Social-networking operations, such as MySpace and Tribe.  And, of course, Craigslist.  "Craig has a shack [in California] and these New York Times people are terrified, and that goes for the whole of the American print industry," he said. "The New York Times is about to move into a massive new headquarters, and employs around 10,000 people." 

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