Ibarguen ’66 Discusses Future of News

Alberto Ibarguen ’66, CEO of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and former publisher of The Miami Herald, was a guest recently on the PBS News Hour in a segmented devoted to the future of newspapers.

The segment aired to coincide with the move of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer from print to the web. Ibarguen told the News Hour’s Jeffrey Brown that the market will find a way to “provide people with the news that we need to function in a democracy”—though perhaps not through newspapers.

Asked about the record of newspapers migrating to the web, Ibarguen called it “inconclusive.”

A model for the post-newspaper world is not yet apparent, he noted, but it will be digital, mobile, and interactive.

“So far, nothing comes close to the general reach of a newspaper, that ability to blanket a community with the same information that everybody can share, and figure out how to go forward together as a community, nothing yet,” he added. “But we also haven’t had a major city that doesn’t have a newspaper. And when that happens, I think the market will figure out how to deliver that information. I think it is that important.”