Just another sunny newspaper guy


Marc Andreessen is a really smart guy and I don’t mean to be pollyannish, but I’m not ready to do a deathwatch on The New York Times, despite its boardroom brawls with big investors, its stock price plunge over the course of 2007 and its sickly recent earnings.

Even with all the bad news, I’m just optimistic enough to think it’s a bit premature to write the prepared obit for The New York Times and the rest of the newspaper industry.

He does have a point in that media companies boardrooms are stocked with more Scotch than experts in the most important platform for their future. And you may not even be able to find the good Scotch.

Andreessen, creator of the first widely used Web browser, Mosaic, didn’t even bother to  mention mobile. Maybe he thinks the deathwatch will be over before that takes over?