“… as an industry, many of us have been remarkably, unaccountably complacent. Certainly, I didn’t do as much as I should have after all the excitement of the late 1990’s. I suspect many of you in this room did the same, quietly hoping that this thing called the digital revolution would just limp along.†Rupert Murdoch, speaking April 13, 2005 to the American Society of Newspaper Editors
I was reminded of this quote over the weekend as I prepared for a presentation I am giving tomorrow to the Queensland Newsagents State Conference.
Rupert Murdoch’s speech was a seminal moment in newspaper publishing. The complacency of which he spoke was replaced by frenetic activity within News Corp. and other publishing companies around the world. While they have invested considerably in online and print businesses in the years since, it is the online investments which draw the most attention.
It is interesting comparing the activity of newspaper publishers since April 2005 in pursuit of new revenue streams with the activity of newsagents over the same period. Most newsagents continue to be complacent about the disruption occurring to the supply and retail models on which our businesses are based.