Future of newspapers 'promising'

Global media magnate Rupert Murdoch says doomsayers who are predicting that the Internet will kill off newspapers are "misguided cynics" who fail to grasp that the online world is potentially a huge new market of information-hungry consumers.

Newspaper companies in the US and elsewhere are facing fundamental changes to their businesses as more people get their news from the Internet and other sources, and advertisers follow the market away from the paper-and-ink format.

Murdoch, the Australian-born chairman of News Corp, said in a speech broadcast on Sunday titled "The Future of Newspapers: Moving Beyond Dead Trees" that the Internet offered opportunities as well as challenges and that newspapers would always be around in some form or other.