Newspaper industry

McClatchy CEO: Online revenue to exceed print within next 10 years

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Alan Gardner March 18, 2006 1 minute 0 comments

McClatchy CEO Gary Pruitt admits that even within the next ten years, the online revenue of newspapers will not surpass that of the print versions.

Pruitt believes, touchingly, in newspapers. He tells me that newspapers’ online revenues may not exceed print revenues even 10 years hence, which is probably right, and that the growth of craigslist and other almost wholly free classified sites “does not mean that [newspapers’ classified] revenues over time will shrink,” which is almost certainly wrong. Still, he has managed to please both Wall Street analysts worried about numbers — in press accounts they sound like high schoolers with crushes — and editorial types worried about journalism. His company has also maintained circulation levels even as some peers struggle to stem gruesome declines.