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Some newspapers will die says Guardian editor

Posted: 25/08/06 By: Oliver Luft

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Responding to an article in The Economist predicting the death of printed newspapers, Alan Rusbridger, editor of the Guardian, claimed that not all newspapers would survive as more people go to the web for news.

"I think the next few years are going to be very expensive for newspapers, there is no doubt there is a decline in circulation and there is a decline in advertising revenue because both are going to the web.

"There is a disaggregation of advertising from editorial, there is a fragmentation of audience, there is competition from free sheets, and all this is happening at a time when broadsheets in this country are losing quite large sums of money.

"They are also going to have to spend large sums of money investing in the web and new technology. I'm not convinced that everyone is going to make it," he told BBC's Today programme.

Mr Rusbridger also claimed that he could foresee a time where newspapers printed on Victorian machinery ceased to exist - yet suggested there would always be an audience for journalism.

"We're making a lot of money online already and our revenues online are going up about 50 per cent a year and there is, I think, a lot of money to be made online.

"I think the important thing . . . is to keep a nerve in what we do but not to get hung-up on print on paper, it may become to impossible to print newspapers."

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