News Corp media baron Rupert Murdoch has echoed comments made last month by Reuters boss Tom Glocer about the impact the free flow of digital information will have on ‘old media’.

Speaking to The Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers in London, he foretold of a new generation of fast food media consumers who demand that content is ‘delivered when they want it, how they want it and very much as they want it’.

Murdoch’s message is less about the possibilities of embracing what he termed ‘the golden age of information’, than the wrackful force of such ‘creative, destructive technologies’ for those reticent to do so. ‘Societies or companies that expect a glorious past to shield them from the forces of change driven by advancing technologies will fail and fall,’ he prophesied, warning that ‘power is moving away from the old elite in our industry – the editors, the chief executives and, let’s face it, the proprietors.’

So-called ‘new media is still in its infancy,’ admitted Murdoch, ‘yet it is breaking and remaking everything in its path.’ Suspecting that he may be part of a dying breed, his comments were nevertheless tempered with a glimmer of hope: ‘I believe traditional newspapers have many years of life but, equally, I think in the future that newsprint and ink will be just one of many channels to our readers.’ He went on to say that ‘great journalism will always attract readers’, but reminded his audience of more than 200 liverymen and freemen of the trade guild that, ‘the words, pictures and graphics that are the stuff of journalism have to be brilliantly packaged; they must feed the mind and move the heart.’

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