SAN FRANCISCO -- Intel chairman Andy Grove said that the Web will force the newspaper business to undergo the same upheaval that his company faced in the mid-1980s.
"You are where Intel was three years before the roof fell in on us," he said.
Grove, addressing editors and publishers at the American Society of Newspaper Editors convention, said the business must reinvent itself and play on its strengths.
"What is it that you can do that Web publications cannot do?"
Adding extensive interpretation and historical perspective to news reporting is expensive, he said, requiring more reporters spending more time in libraries, doing more research -- more "people on the street." That's a difficult prospect for publishers, especially in a time of decreasing margins and falling ad revenue.
"But you cannot save your way out of [a business crisis]," he admonished them. "You can only invest your way out of it."
As for what today's papers are doing wrong, Grove wasn't afraid to let his graying editorial audience have it.
"[Newspaper reporting] is lacking perspective, it's lacking meat, it's lacking accountability," Grove said.
A one-time journalist in his homeland of Hungary, Grove outlined where he obtained most of his online news, which he described as "an almost accidental" process. Grove trolls Reuters for headlines, stock news from CBS Marketwatch, some from the Associated Press here, a little from ZDNet there, and "for industry gossip, I go to CNET."
"Then I go home and read two newspapers. One is the San Jose Mercury News; the other is The Wall Street Journal."
What he looks for there, off the Net, is not data. "I'm looking for something beyond that -- some interpretation, some perspective." He said he's not referring to opinion pieces, but well-researched historical context for the events of the day.
By and large, he told his attentive audience, he's not getting it.
Where reporters may hold a politician to words uttered in a state assembly campaign five years before, "there's absolutely no institutional memory to business reporting," Grove said.
This absence of a historical viewpoint provided leeway for companies like Intel to "be more creative" in their strategies, Grove said. "But I don't like it as a [newspaper] customer."
Newspapers need to hold companies more accountable, calling attention to things such as business visions that haven't materialized. "From my perspective, that's what editors are supposed to be doing, and I don't think you're doing that."
But there was no sign that Grove's call for change got through. The second question from the floor seemed oblivious to the spanking Grove had just administered.
"We're trying to bring about change in our newsrooms. What advice do you have for us?"
Grove groaned.
"That's a big question," he said, after taking a couple of stabs at an answer. "I'm trying to say this without using the word paradigm." He found a adequate synonym in "the new shape of things" and told the editors they first had to look for that new shape.
Then go for it with gusto. Even if it means faking it.
"You have to commit yourself to the new way of things long before [the new shape] is clear. You have to exaggerate the confidence you have [in it] and the commitment you have to it, and ... [then] spread some of that courage that you're feigning around."
