Interview with Antoni Maria Piqué, media consultant and associate professor at the the International University of Catalunya’s School of Journalism.

Q: How do you think journalism will change in the next 10 years?

The challenge for all of us, journalists, academics, consultants, is to reinvent journalism, not daily newspapers, TV and radio. They are only instruments. Journalism is supposed to serve the public’s right to information. We have to discover new ways in which journalists may better serve the people. We need to learn, for example, how to create journalism on Twitter and how to deal accurately with instant information. We’ll have to relearn our values as journalists. The challenge is to reinvent journalism. The era of newspapers, TV and radio will be over in 10 or 15 years at the latest.

Q: Do you think in 10 years we won’t use newspapers, television or radio stations?

They’ll still exist, but their relevance will be near zero in most cases, because new media will provide people with information much faster than the old media are able to.  It’s like trying to salvage the old horse-drawn carriages, although we should invest in new roads, new gas stations and new repair shops. We have cars, we no longer have a need for horse-drawn carriages, thus it makes no sense to keep the old water deposits, silos and stagecoach stops.

Q: Will newspapers, television and radio have a future as entertainment media?

TV basically serves as entertainment now. News broadcasts are really expensive and not quite feasible. However, until now they were necessary in order to establish TV as a “brand.”  If you can have live news coverage on the Internet, it doesn’t make any sense to devote a lot of money to TV operations. TV, radio and newspapers will become completely irrelevant as news providers.