I predict that the end of printed newspapers will happen in the time it takes for most people to upgrade their cell phones two more times. The iPhone, and its inevitable copycats, (let’s call them iClones) are newspaper killers.

When you have a web browser in your pocket, a printed newspaper is redundant. Eventually, all cell phones will have Internet browsing built in. You might not have a web browser on your next cell phone, but the one after that will have it as a standard feature.

The Dilbert Blog: The Future of Newspapers

There’s one catch in this theory: a percentage of the population will always want to read a story in full, and at leisure. I now trudge around with an iPod touch in my pocket. While its web browser (same as that in the iPhone) is guaranteed to make you giggle, it doesn’t transform the reading experience. Or maybe you disagree.

I hear views that magazines and newspapers should begin to emulate websites – bite-sized chunks, 50-word paragraphs, you know the kind of stuff. Snack media. Then, over the weekend, I sat in a a coffee shop thumbing through the latest issue of Monocle. There are words in it, lots of them, and they are sized to be read. It works. It’s also evidence that there was a counter school of thought – print should do what it (still) does best, namely present the written word in a way that allows you to follow a narrative for more than 30 seconds.