Last week Journalism.co.uk attended the INMA and Online Publishers Association (OPA) Europe’s annual conference Outlook 2010 – the event focused on innovation, transformation and making money for media businesses. Follow our coverage at this link.

Former ContentNext research director and media analyst Lauren Rich Fine opened her conference presentation with a potentially ‘heretical’ question: “Is it possible that there’s too much news?”

Fine’s overview of the state of the media industry (focusing on the US market) and her ideas for a more collaborative, cooperative future can be listened to in full below:

Here are some key quotes:

On content:

• “I would suggest to you that there might be too much content, that we need to see rampant consolidation, that it’s not just going to be in the newspaper industry (…) it has to be everywhere.”

On the newspaper industry:

• “The newspaper industry has been very bad at being optimistic about its future, the newspaper industry has been really bad at marketing itself (and TV and radio are even more off-base).”

On advertising:

• “Classified advertising is permanently exiting newspapers – and it should, it works better online.”
• “If classified advertising continues to fall by the wayside this could be an industry operating with no margin.”