If you missed it, there’s a great interview between Charlie Rose and Mark Andreessen of Netscape and Ning fame available online. It pushes 60 minutes in length, but worth every second.
Among the array of brain droppings from mobile hitting it big to the monetization of Facebook, Andreessen give his 2 cents in regards to the print editions of newspapers: “Kill them.”
In response to Rose’s question about how to “play offense” with the newspapers, Andreessen said, “Stop the presses tomorrow. I’ll tell you what. The stocks would go up. Look at what’s happened to the stocks. This investors are through this. The investors are through the transition. You talk to any smart investor who controls any amount of money, he will tell you that the game is up. Like it’s completely over. And so the investors have completely written off the print operations. There is no value in these stock prices attributable to print anymore at all. It’s gone.”
And in response to Rose’s pushback that ripping off the band aid might be a bad idea, Andreessen retorted, “Chronic pain? Acute pain. How many years — music industry, same thing. How many years of chronic pain do you want to take to avoid taking a year of acute pain?”
Many in the employment space would disagree, including the brain trusts at CareerBuilder and Shaker, but he’s probably right. More insight at TechCrunchIT.
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