Murdoch all up in My Space's face

Rupert Murdoch, who recently spent £332.85m on the youth networking site MySpace.com, issued a “change or die” warning to an audience of US editors earlier this year. Admitting that the media industry had been “remarkably, unaccountably complacent”, he described the shift in attitudes as “a revolution in the way young people are accessing news”.

“They don’t want to rely on the morning paper for their up-to-date information. They don’t want to rely on a God-like figure from above to tell them what’s important. And to carry the religion analogy a bit further, they certainly don’t want news presented as gospel,” he said.

In an attempt to reach new and young audiences, advertising is rapidly migrating online. Jupiter Research has forecast that the online advertising market will reach $18.9bn (£11bn) by 2010, compared with $9.3bn at the end of 2004, at the expense of traditional media. But newspaper publishers and news broadcasters will take some comfort from the Guardian/ICM poll’s findings. Six in 10 said they “like to keep up with the news”, rising to more than seven in 10 among 20 and 21-year-olds. Contrary to the prevailing wisdom that young people are turning to the internet for news, television and newspapers remain by far the most popular means of accessing information.