Murdoch at 74 is no different to the Murdoch at 44 who would discomfort executives by inviting them to remind him how old they were. One said: “I’m an age that will always be fashionable, Rupert – I’m the same age as you.” Murdoch grinned. He was as aware of his galloping years as of theirs. No change here, then. The axiomatic need for newspaper professionals to be aware what young customers want was the essence of his recent address to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, to whose conference he devoted a couple of his precious hours.

His digital-age message: “There’s a revolution taking place. The future course of news is being altered by technology-savvy young people no longer wedded to traditional news outlets or even accessing news in traditional ways. Instead, consumers between 18 and 34 are increasingly using the web as their medium of choice for news. Their attitudes towards newspapers are especially alarming. Only 9 per cent describe us as trustworthy and only 4 per cent think we’re entertaining. They want control over their media instead of being controlled by it.”

Murdoch admitted his own slow reactions to the problem and told the editors they, too, had been remarkably complacent. Rather than simply republishing their print editions to the web, they must become web destinations. “Today, the newspaper is just a paper. Tomorrow, it can be a destination [like] the internet portals, the Yahoos, Googles and MSNs. The challenge is to create an internet presence compelling enough for users to make us their home page. What is required is a complete transformation of the way we think about our product. Unless we awaken, we will as an industry be relegated to the status of also-rans.”

Having secured his plinth in the press pantheon by saving Fleet Street from a living death under the trades unions (and under the flabby managements that sustained them), Murdoch is now out to save the newspaper business from failing to exploit the e-world in which young customers live. In the U.S., the average age of newspaper readers is now 53. (Britain’s National Readership Survey does not offer a comparative figure.) To doubters, Murdoch recommended reading the Carnegie Corporation report on which his speech was based. So we have. Let’s search the Carnegie Reporter spring issue. And let’s fasten our seatbelts for a nightmare scenario headed: “Stop Press! Abandoning the News.” Its author is Merrill Brown, founding editor-in-chief (1996-2002) of MSNBC, America’s No. 3 cable news network. Brown’s summing up:

“The message loud and clear is that there are new forms of participatory or citizen journalism that can engage those who had been outside today’s news environment... Many executives cringe at the idea of such projects. But these are bold concepts and their premise – that news can actually be generated by readers – may be precisely what many young, dissatisfied news consumers will respond to. Similarly, news organisations need to connect to consumers through e-mail and instant messaging services...What’s required is to recognise that daily news delivery mechanisms need an approach focused on techniques that go far beyond who said what yesterday or the day before. News products could be built around information services designed for the internet or for cellular and multimedia delivery... News executives need to open themselves to input, feedback, ideas and journalism from outside their own organisations. Without this kind of dramatic rethinking, without new openness to new approaches, the industry is in peril.”

“Meanwhile, the news industry should work hand-in-hand with bloggers and other independent journalists and citizens... The old media oligopoly is being supplemented, if not necessarily replaced, by new forms of journalism created by freelancers and interested members of the public without conventional training. Newspapers are the least preferred choice for local, national and international news.”

Without perhaps an Enigma decoder, and certainly a dedicated British survey (which would likely produce contrary results because of the huge differences in U.S. and UK media industry structures), we should not simply surrender to this woe-woe scenario. Can we imagine a Britain in which commuter trains, coffee bars and the back seats of taxis throb with young news junkies key-stroking cellular handsets for updates from bloggers and citizen reporters? Calling up on screen that morning’s Rees-Mogg commentary, or maybe having him read it to them? Hearing Peter McKay chortle “Ain’t life grand?” as he taps out his impish column? Sitting in on a red-top confrontation with a Love Rat? Or looking up celeb skirts live with the Daily Sport?

Bloggers are windbags

But, whatever its value in the U.S., we surely will not regard the Merrill Brown report as any more reliable a basis for strategic UK decisions than the Pentagon evaluation of Saddam’s WMD. The BJR view of the web is that it is crucial for the future of press profitability – The New York Times was ahead of the game with a financially vibrant website. Most British papers aren’t at that stage yet, but must recognise that the web is just as important as format changes, free newspapers, “lites” and other industry innovations. As for bloggers and citizen reporters, perhaps some kind media mogul would care to commission a scientific survey to discover how alike, or unalike, young Americans are to the target generation this side of the Atlantic.

Those bloody Awards

Currently all is quiet on this particular Awards front, but we must hope that radical reform is in hand of what has become as unseemly as the lads’ and ladettes’ nights out frequently featured in the popular press. As a character in Tom Stoppard’s Night and Day nearly said: “I’m all for freedom of the press. It’s the bloody newspaper awards I can’t stand.”