March 17, 2010 I.H.T. Op-Ed Contributor The End of Newspapers? By MARIE BÉNILDE Journalists are now in the same situation as steel workers in the 1970s: They are destined to disappear, but they don't know it. That was the assessment of a banker from BNP-Paribas at the French national press federation's conference in Strasbourg in 2006. His words caused a sensation, but the statistics support him: Having lost more than 2,300 jobs last year, the French press is going through a crisis similar to America's. Every national daily in France, apart from the sports daily, L'Equipe, has lost money. In the United States, only 300,000 people now work in newspapers, compared to 415,000 a decade ago. According to the management consultants Bain and Company, the Internet increased its share of global profits in the creative industries from 4 to 22 percent in the last 10 years, at the expense of the press, which saw its profits fall from 40 percent to 14 percent. The public has also become disillusioned with the content supplied by a journalistic elite that has lost credibility. Newspapers are increasingly seen as politically biased and uninterested in the needs of their readers. Continua qui: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/17/opinion/17iht-edbenilde.html