It is a great honour to be here tonight, at this prestigious occasion. I congratulate the Berner Tagblatt Medien group for having initiated these prizes for the best in local print journalism and for the best in photo journalism, and I of course congratulate the winners. They represent the best qualities of journalism, which makes it fitting that the task that I have been assigned is to offer some thoughts about the future of journalism, and whether such qualities can be preserved and even enhanced in the future.

But foretelling the future of journalism is not a simple matter, for two reasons.

First, because I, as a journalist, am no better qualified to predict the future than anyone else. Sam Goldwyn, the great Hollywood media mogul, spoke the truth when he joked that you should "never forecast, especially about the future". Forecasts are in reality almost always wrong, certainly if they are the most interesting sort of forecasts, that is, ones that pretend to look further ahead than just a year or two.

The second reason is that, to a very large extent, the basics of journalism are eternal and unchanging, for good and for ill. The future of journalism is, to a large extent, the same as its past. Ever since the first gossip sheets were distributed, ever since the first efforts were made to report and appraise events for a non-specialist audience, probably by someone in ancient Rome, journalism has been admired and enjoyed for the same strengths, criticised and even despised for the same weaknesses.

It has been admired when the writing is clear, fluent, accurate and unstuffy, when it both entertains and informs. It has been admired when it has been independent of partisan pressure and bias, when it has spoken awkward truths or revealed things powerful people and institutions would rather not see revealed. It has been valued in high moral and political terms as an essential part of the structure of a free, open society. And it has been valued in more practical terms as being a lot more fun to read than a scholastic textbook or more fun to listen to than a pompous speech by a high official.

But it has also been despised, throughout history, for consistent, perhaps eternal reasons. It has been despised when it is confusingly written, poorly informed and unreliable, when it is a mere purveyor of gossip and tittle-tattle—or, sometimes, when it is partisan, biased, uncomfortably close to powerful people, firms and governments. It has been criticised when it callously ruins the lives and reputations of innocent people, or when it conveys false or misleading information, spreading panic or alarm unnecessarily among the populace.

It has been the frequent butt of jokes and put-downs:

Adlai Stevenson, a fine presidential candidate in America in the early 1950s, said that the function of a newspaper editor was to separate the wheat from the chaff, and then publish the chaff.

Charles Baudelaire, one of Frances greatest poets, said that:

"I am unable to understand how a man of honour could take a newspaper in his hands without a shudder of disgust."

And a poem by a rather less notable English writer of doggerel, Humbert Wolfe, declared that:

You cannot hope

To bribe or twist

Thank God! The British journalist.

But seeing what

Hell do unbribed,

Theres no occasion to.

So, ladies and gentleman, one prediction about the future of journalism is absolutely secure. Journalists will continue to be despised and criticised, often for good reason. The tendency, in all countries, to lament declining standards, to cry that the media are dumbing themselves down, is nothing new. But also, journalists will, in the future, continue to be admired and valued, also for the same good reasons as in the past, whenever they deserve it.

But while many things remain the same as ever, there are indeed some new factors to be taken into account. Journalism is coming under new pressures. Although, as Sam Goldwyn said, it is best not to forecast about the future, what one can do is to examine those trends in the present and recent past that are changing our craft, and to make some suggestions about where they might be leading us.

The most obvious, and most important trend, arises from information technology. Since information is our bread and butter, it would be surprising if we were not affected by IT. We are, and indeed we have been affected by it for decades now: by the arrival of broadcast television, by fast and cheap communication for newsgathering and photo transmission, by the replacement of our old printing and typesetting technologies by new, digital, computerised methods. And now, we are facing the growth of the Internet, the development of the transmission of the written word in electronic form, the convergence of the different media of video, audio and text in the same channels, the multiplication of such channels because of digital television and, in future, broadband communications.

We in the media tend to be obsessed by these things. We wonder endlessly about how we should change the way we do things in order to accommodate and exploit such technological change. We in newspapers and magazines wonder endlessly about whether parts of our revenue streams might migrate to the Internet, particularly classified advertising of jobs and services and property. We wonder endlessly about how we can connect all our reporters by e-mail or with Intranets, how we can share information, how we can use our computers to manipulate pictures and produce snazzier graphics, how we can get our ideas and reports and images to more readers, more quickly, in more ways.

These obsessions are quite understandable. After all, the biggest effect so far of IT on the newspaper industry was entirely internal, it affected our processes, the way we produced our papers and magazines, rather than really affecting our readers. But these obsessions with processes and channels risk missing the bigger picture. It is in our readers minds that the future of journalism really lies, and will really be shaped. Journalism will go wrong, and decline or fall into new competitors hands if we do one thing: if we fail to keep our eye on the most important factor of all, our readers.

So what might our readers want, in future? That is the question to which we must find answers, if we are to survive and thrive and stand proud and tall.

To a great extent, they will want the same as they have always wanted. Information, about things relevant to them and enjoyable to them, presented in as clear and easily digested a way as possible. Revelation, enquiry and analysis, to help them understand and deal with the pressures and powers surrounding them, whether in local politics, or international business, or in environmental concerns, or on the grand theatre of geopolitics.

What is changing for our readers is that they now have more choice of sources of information and entertainment than ever before, with more choice of which channel or medium to use to get hold of them, and with less regulation of some or all of those channels than before.

There is already, therefore, more competition for the readers attention and time and money. And, from the readers point of view, there is an ever richer but also more bewildering array of news and information and entertainment available, and this cornucopia is only going to get larger and more bewildering and more varied in its origins and its nature.

So how will readers respond to this? How will younger readers, more attuned to new technology and less tied to old loyalties or habits, differ from their parents and grandparents in what they want from journalism?

We cannot know the answer. But we can know a few things about how we are going to have to respond to these changes and challenges.

First, we are going to have to try even harder to grab and keep the readers attention. This has always been a prime task of journalism, but it is going to get harder. We will have to use our words, our ideas, our images, our designs, in ways that readers find attractive.

But, second, we are going to have to try to make those readers loyal, once we have grabbed their attention. In a media world in which it is ever easier to switch channels or sources at the click of a button, we cannot survive or get our ideas across if we merely treat the reader as someone with which we have a daily or hourly or weekly transaction. We must make the reader trust us, and want to continue to read us or listen to us on a consistent basis. To do that, we must convince the reader that we are worth paying to be their agent, their representative, their eyes, their ears, their processor of information.

Which means, third, that we must always resist the incursion of advertising and other short-term commercial pressures into journalism and into journalistic decisions. Our customer is the reader, not the advertiser, nor anyone else, however rich and powerful they may be. Until we have the reader, we have nothing to offer the advertiser. Indeed, without the reader, we have nothing and are nothing, and can have no long-term prosperity. And as soon as the reader suspects that he or she is being tricked by us on behalf of the advertiser, he will disappear to another source. This has always been true, but is becoming a more intense pressure as publications become desperate for income and as the Internet leads publications to offer themselves free and to rely wholly on advertising or sponsorship revenue.

It is also, fourth, a world in which a new multiplicity of messages has begun to rain down upon our readers. Where once there were just governments, political parties and big companies to worry about and be scrutinised, now new technology and a newly open, democratised and globalised society mean that new entities are trying to get their voices heard: in particular the thousands of non-governmental organisations, or NGOs, that seek to get their way on particular issues or for particular causes.

All of which, combined, mean that we, as journalists, must offer ourselves as the readers solution to the bewilderment with which they are confronted in modern times. They face a forest of information, through which they need to pay to be guided by a reliable friend, who will not sell them to the nearest bandit. Those bandits are all around our readers now: they are politicians and corporate bosses and trade unions, as before, but also they are now the pressure groups and anarchists and dreamers of all sorts. We, as journalists, must scrutinise all these powerful groups with equal vigour and rigour, helping our readers see the wood from the trees, the good from the bad, the public interest from the selfish desire.

It is not a new agenda. It is a future in which all the old virtues of journalism will be required, in the same way as before. And it is a future in which all our old vices will be there as well.

Most of all, it is a future in which I firmly believe that the best in journalism can and will thrive. It is a future in which top quality independent analysis and reporting, clearly presented, in the ways and at the times that readers want it presented, will be a more and more valuable thing. In a world of choice, of more fluid societies and economies, a world where there are no fixed points, no anchors from religion or politics or other traditional sources of loyalty, the role of journalism, and indeed the responsibilities of journalism, will grow and grow.

For that world, top quality written journalism and top quality photo journalism will be ever more important and, I believe, valuable. Which is why the Berner Tagblatt Medien and the Berner Zeitung are right to look for, and reward through these prizes, the very best in Swiss journalism. I again congratulate you for having initiated these prizes, and I congratulate the winners for their achievement and their contribution to good journalism.

And I thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for having supported the best in journalism by attending this evening, and for having listened so patiently to my remarks.

  ********************************************************