Here is an edited ver­sion of Rupert Mur­doch’s Boyer lec­ture — The Future of News­pa­pers: Mov­ing Bey­ond Dead Trees. One word sum­mary? Brands.

But here it is:

Too many journ­al­ists seem to take a per­verse pleas­ure in rumin­at­ing on their pending demise. I know indus­tries that are today facing stiff new com­pet­i­tion from the inter­net: banks, retail­ers, phone com­pan­ies and so on. But these sec­tors also see the inter­net as an extraordin­ary oppor­tun­ity. But among our journ­al­istic friends are some mis­guided cyn­ics who are too busy writ­ing their own obit­u­ary to be excited by the opportunity.

Self-pity is never pretty. And some­times it even starts in journ­al­ism school, some of which are per­petu­at­ing the pess­im­ism of their tri­bal eld­ers. But I have a very dif­fer­ent view.

Unlike the doom and gloom­ers, I believe that news­pa­pers will reach new heights. In the 21st cen­tury, people are hun­grier for inform­a­tion than ever. And they have more sources of inform­a­tion than ever.

Amid these many diverse and com­pet­ing voices, read­ers want what they’ve always wanted: a source they can trust. That has always been the role of great news­pa­pers in the past. And that role will make news­pa­pers great in the future.

If you dis­cuss the future with news­pa­per­men, you will find that too many think that our busi­ness is only phys­ical news­pa­pers. I like the look and feel of news­print as much as any­one. But our real busi­ness isn’t print­ing on dead trees. It’s giv­ing our read­ers great journ­al­ism and great judgment.

It’s true that in the com­ing dec­ades the prin­ted ver­sions of some news­pa­pers will lose cir­cu­la­tion. But if papers provide read­ers with news they can trust, we’ll see gains in cir­cu­la­tion: on our web pages, through our RSS feeds, in emails deliv­er­ing cus­tom­ised news and advert­ising, to mobile phones.

In short, we are mov­ing from news papers to news brands. For all of my work­ing life, I have believed that there is a social and com­mer­cial value in deliv­er­ing accur­ate news and inform­a­tion in a cheap and timely way. In this com­ing cen­tury, the form of deliv­ery may change, but the poten­tial audi­ence for our con­tent will mul­tiply many times over.

The news busi­ness is very per­sonal for me. For more than a half cen­tury, news­pa­pers have been at the heart of my busi­ness. If I am scep­tical about the pess­im­ists today, it’s because of a simple reason: I have heard their mor­ose sooth­say­ing many times before.

The chal­lenges are real. There will prob­ably never be a paper­less office, but young people are start­ing paper­less homes. Tra­di­tional sources of rev­enue — such as clas­si­fieds — are dry­ing up, put­ting pres­sure on the busi­ness model. And journ­al­ists face new com­pet­i­tion from altern­at­ive sources of news and information.

So we have a steady stream of stor­ies such as The Eco­nom­ist cov­ers declar­ing that “news­pa­pers are now an endangered spe­cies”. That’s quite ironic com­ing from a suc­cess­ful and grow­ing magazine that likes to describe itself as “a newspaper”.

My sum­mary of the way some of the estab­lished media has respon­ded to the inter­net is this: it’s not news­pa­pers that might become obsol­ete. It’s some of the edit­ors, report­ers and pro­pri­et­ors who are for­get­ting a newspaper’s most pre­cious asset: the bond with its readers.

When I was grow­ing up, this was the key les­son my father impressed on me. If you were an owner, the best thing you could do was to hire edit­ors who looked out for your read­ers’ interests and gave these read­ers good, hon­est report­ing on issues that mattered most to them. In return, you would be rewar­ded with trust and loy­alty you could take to the bank.

Over many dec­ades in news­pa­pers, I have been priv­ileged to wit­ness his­tory being made and prin­ted almost every night. Today I’d like to talk about what these exper­i­ences have taught me and why they give me con­fid­ence about the future.

My intent is to use my exper­i­ence to illu­min­ate the way we need to respond to the two most ser­i­ous chal­lenges facing news­pa­pers today. The first is the com­pet­i­tion that is com­ing from new tech­no­logy, espe­cially the internet.

The more ser­i­ous chal­lenge is the com­pla­cency and con­des­cen­sion that festers at the heart of some news­rooms. The com­pla­cency stems from hav­ing enjoyed a mono­poly and now find­ing they have to com­pete for an audi­ence they once took for granted.

The con­des­cen­sion that many show their read­ers is an even big­ger prob­lem. It takes no spe­cial genius to point out that if you are con­temp­tu­ous of your cus­tom­ers, you are going to have a hard time get­ting them to buy your product. News­pa­pers are no exception.

I became an editor and owner well before I had planned. It happened when my father died and I was called home from Oxford. That was how I found myself a news­pa­per pro­pri­etor at the age of 22.

I was so young and so new to the busi­ness, when I pulled my car into the lot on my firstday, the gar­age attend­ant admon­ished me, “Hey, sonny, you can’t park here.”

That paper was (Adelaide’s) The News. Its news­room was a noisy place. But it was noise with pur­pose. The chat­ter­ing and pound­ing of type­writer keys reached a cres­cendo in the minutes before a dead­line that was stretched bey­ond break­ing point by gun report­ers determ­ined to get the latest, freshest ver­sion of a story.

That back­ground music cre­ated an urgency all of its own. When the presses began to run, every­one in the build­ing felt the rumble. And when the presses were late, the journ­al­ists felt me rumble.

Read­ers want news as much as they ever did. Today The Times of Lon­don is read by a diverse global audi­ence of 26 mil­lion people each month. That is an audi­ence lar­ger than the entire pop­u­la­tion of Aus­tralia, an audi­ence whose sheer size is bey­ond the com­pre­hen­sion and ambi­tions of its founders in 1785.

That single stat­istic tells you that there is a dis­cern­ing audi­ence for news. The oper­at­ive word is dis­cern­ing. To com­pete today, you can’t offer the old one-size-fits-all approach to news.

The defin­ing digital trend in con­tent is the increas­ing soph­ist­ic­a­tion of search. You can already cus­tom­ise your news flow, whether by coun­try, com­pany or subject.

A dec­ade from now, the offer­ings will be even more soph­ist­ic­ated. You will be able to sat­isfy your unique interests and search for unique content.

After all, a female uni­ver­sity stu­dent in Malay­sia is not going to have the same interests as a 60-year-old Man­hat­tan exec­ut­ive. Closer to home, your teen­age son is not going to have the same interests as your mother. The chal­lenge is to use a newspaper’s brand while allow­ing read­ers to per­son­al­ise the news for them­selves, and then deliver it in the ways that they want.

This is what we are try­ing to do at The Wall Street Journal. The Journal has the advant­age of hav­ing a very loyal read­er­ship — a brand known for qual­ity — and edit­ors who take the read­ers and their interests ser­i­ously. This helps explain why the Journal con­tin­ues to defy industry trends.

Of the 10 largest papers in the US, the Journal is the only one to have grown its paid sub­scrip­tions last year.

At the same time, we intend to make our mark on the digital fron­tier. The Journal is already the only US news­pa­per that makes real money online.

One reason for this is a grow­ing global demand for busi­ness news and for accur­ate news. Integ­rity is not just a char­ac­ter­istic of our com­pany, it is a selling point.

One way we are plan­ning to take advant­age of online oppor­tun­it­ies is by offer­ing three tiers of con­tent. The first will be the news that we put online free. The second will be avail­able for those who sub­scribe to wsj.com. And the third will be a premium ser­vice, designed to give its cus­tom­ers the abil­ity to cus­tom­ise high-end fin­an­cial news and ana­lysis from around the world.

In all we do, we’re going to deliver it in ways that best fit our read­ers’ pref­er­ences: on web pages they can access from home or work, on still-evolving inven­tions such as Amazon’s Kindle (a wire­less book reader), as well as on (mobile) phones or BlackBerrys.

I do not claim to have all the answers. Given the real­it­ies of mod­ern tech­no­logy, this very radio address can be sliced and digit­ally diced. It can be accessed in a day or a month or a dec­ade. And I can rightly be held to account in per­petu­ity for the points on which I am proven wrong, as well as mocked for my inab­il­ity to see just how much more dif­fer­ent the world had become.

But I don’t think I will be proven wrong on one point. The news­pa­per, or a very close elec­tronic cousin, will always be around. It may not be thrown on your front door­step the way it is today. But the thud it makes as it lands will con­tinue to echo across soci­ety and the world.

[The Aus­tralian]