The Future of Newspapers: Gazing into the Crystal Kindle Ball

Well it looks like at least one person is keeping a positive outlook on the future of newspapers. She even seems to have some “ideas.” Who is this crazy Pollyanna? Well that would be new WaPo publisher Katharine Weymouth (she was recently profiled by Lloyd Grove for Portfolio) who appeared rather upbeat when she spoke with On the Media the other day about the future of the industry. Here’s some of what she had to say.

I guess I think there’s a lot of hope, right? I mean, you know, 600 odd thousand people every single day buy our paper, and that’s the actual physical copy.

We have 9 million unique visitors every month on the Web. You know, my daughter, who’s eight, is reading books on the Kindle. And I went on vacation a week ago and I took the Kindle with me, because I couldn’t get the Washington Post, and I read the Washington Post every day on the Kindle.

I mean, I think the world is changing. But we’ve seen movies go through this, we’re seeing music go through this. Other industries have evolved and survived to see another day, and I think we will be one of them.

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