'They're all going to be video journalists'

In case you missed it, Forbes has a rundown on the assessment of the newspaper industry from Gary Pruitt, chairman, president and CEO of McClatchy, and Scott Flanders, president and CEO of Freedom Communications.

Flanders: [But] the future is going to be micro-hosted video sites, a lot will be user-generated content but increasingly our reporters have camcorders and are posting their own video. They're all going to be video journalists in the future.

Flanders says its also time to consider free classifieds just so newspapers keep critical mass and don't become irrelevant in that area.

Pruitt, meanwhile, is pushing the "total audience" concept of measurement instead of circulation. The industry is going to be beating this horse hard -- it's already been beating it for several years -- because it looks so much better than circulation. But, like economic impact numbers, it's a lot squishier and highly subject to the underlying assumptions you make. McClatchy's Sacramento Bee signed on this week to the ABC's new "total readership" initiative.