Saddam Delivers Death Knell to Newspapers

Poynter Online's Steve Outing comments on how Saddam's capture early Sunday morning is another death knell for the printed newspaper and how publishers need to begin thinking of themselves as news "companies" rather than "papers". As Sunday editions were delivered Sunday morning, most of the world had already heard of Saddam's capture from the Internet and broadcast television.

Even as publishers were embarrassed by irrelevant front page stories Sunday morning, their own news organizations had the story on their websites giving further credence to the notion that publishers must forget the antiquated, physical paper form of generating news and concentrate on delivering news using the fastest possible format.