Speech by Rupert Murdoch to the American Society of Newspaper Editors

Old-media tycoon warns editors to think young & digital -- this is how Bob Stepno's Other Journalism Weblog tells about this event

Rupert Murdoch, head of the international media empire called News Corp., has his eye on young people and their new habits with online media:

"What is happening is, in short, a revolution in the way young people are accessing news. They don't want to rely on the morning paper for their up-to-date information. They don't want to rely on a God-like figure from above to tell them what's important. And to carry the religion analogy a bit further, they certainly don't want news presented as gospel.
"Instead, they want their news on demand, when it works for them. They want control over their media, instead of being controlled by it. They want to question, to probe, to offer a different angle."

In a speech on Apr 13 to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Murdoch shared a view of a media future informed by bloggers, podcasters and Google -- citing, among other things, Phil Meyer's book The Vanishing Newspaper and the recent Carnegie Corporation report on young people's news habits, both of which I've mentioned here in the past month. The full text of his speech is online.

In Dan Gillmor's blog, Gillmor praised Murdoch's openness to new ideas about the digital future -- even if they don't change his opinion of Murdoch as "a press (robber) baron whose greed and overtly one-sided journalism have been a malevolent force in the media sphere."

In case you don't follow such things, Murdoch's News Corp. empire includes not only Fox News, but publications, broadcast and satellite news operations from his native Australia to The Times of London, the New York Post, and Fox-everything.