Newspapers have a long ang hallowed tradition. Photo above shows the staff of the revolutionary paper, La Independencia, set up by Antonio Luna in 1898.

SINCE the 1960s, pundits have been predicting the newspaper's eventual demise. The future of the print media has been hotly debated for years. Hundreds of conferences have been organized about it. Anyone who searches "future of newspapers" in Google, will find over 3,720,000 links. The subject has been endlessly talked and written about.

There are two schools of thought on the newspaper's future. The first predicts there is none and fearlessly pronounces the newspaper's eventual death. The second believes that the unique characteristics of newspapers will enable them to survive in crowded, competitive, and increasingly anarchic media markets.

The pessimist school believes that newspapers of the type that prevailed in the 20th century are dinosaurs, Jurassic creatures that have to adapt if they are to endure in the Darwinian world of 21st-century mass media.

The modes of adaptation can be divided into two, related, categories. The first category has to do with newspapers being radically altered to serve the needs of the new platforms for delivering the news. This means no longer newsprint or paper but computers, mobile phones, or new-generation gadgets for wireless news delivery. These so called third-wave or 3G gadgets will soon be built into everyday items like pens, watches, and powder compacts, from where readers can scroll the headlines. In other words, paperless newspapers or nonpapers. More ominously, a "newspaper" that one can read in the toilet or on the bus, without being wired to a computer or a telephone, and without the bother of messy newsprint.

The other modes of adaptation being suggested have to do with content. For example, Jim Chisolm, the strategy adviser for the World Association of Newspapers, says that the rising popularity of mobile devices will lead to a redefinition of what constitutes news. He predicts that the days of the general-interest, wide-audience appeal of the newspapers will soon be over. Instead, news will be increasingly tailored to the individual needs of readers, who will be provided on their wireless gadgets only the news they want-whether this is about golf in Cebu, the latest mall sale, the NBA games, or the war in Iraq.

In the words of an online journalist, this is like the Daily ME, where readers buy the content of their choice, which is automatically delivered in digital format to the wireless gizmo of their choice. This, by the way, makes editors redundant. The gatekeeping-the sorting of stories and the determination of which ones will be delivered to the reader-will all be done by computer, not by cranky middle-aged men sitting in newsrooms. In this vision, the newspaper becomes, in Chisolm's words, "a lifestyle tool, a package of services." It will also be a very effective platform for advertising.

THE SECOND school of thought, the optimist one, believes in the longevity of newspapers as we know them today and asserts that newspapers have a mission beyond being peddlers of lifestyles and products.

No doubt, this century will be a cruel one for newspapers. But those who believe they have a future do so not because they have reinvented a vision for the print media, but because they see that the core strengths and the core value of newspapers can stand the test of time.

Newspapers, they say, do not need new reasons to justify their existence. The old reasons will do. The role that they have played in their societies for 100, and in some places, nearly 200, years: as purveyors of news and opinion that allow citizens to make informed decisions about whom to vote for, what reforms to demand, and yes, even, what to buy, are still important roles that cannot be displaced by the wonders of 21st-century technology.

The journalism that print journalists know how to do, a journalism that is notable for its thoroughness, insightfulness, and the quality of the research and reporting is the kind of journalism only newspapers — and their stable of experienced reporters — can do. The values embedded in the tradition of newspapers-accuracy, fairness, thoroughness most of all-set them apart from the wannabes.

In 1998, foreseeing the decline of newspapers in a country noted for its newspaper readership, the Japan Newspaper Publishers and Editors Association published a study on the future of newspapers. It recommended that newspapers put a premium on reliability, as this is what would set them apart in a multimedia age, where the premium is on speed.

For sure, the declining credibility of newspapers is cause for worry. In 1999, only 27 percent of those polled by Pulse Asia said that newspapers were more often credible than not credible. The rest displayed varying degrees of skepticism toward newspapers. The papers themselves are partly to blame: over the years, sensational and shoddy reporting has eroded the public's trust.

To their credit, Filipino publishers have realized this as well. In recent years, there has been marked improvement in the overall look of newspapers, which are better designed and printed now than they were a decade ago. The crowded front pages, which the late journalist Louie Beltran famously described as the "unmade-bed" look, has given way to a neater and more modern design.

Many papers have also acquired new presses, resulting in markedly improved printing quality, so that readers' fingers are no longer smeared and blackened by ink when they flip through the pages. In addition, all the major Manila dailies now have Internet editions that allow them to reach out to overseas readers as well as to those in the country who no longer want to shell out money to buy a newspaper every day. Already, the joint Inquirer-GMA7 web page is among the top sites in the world, read mainly by Filipinos abroad who want to keep track of local news. Technology, therefore, has been a boon to newspapers, although new technologies themselves, such as wireless gadgets, also threaten their long-term viability.

The Inquirer has also tried to expand readership by publishing Libre, a tabloid distributed free on the MRT. It is trying to woo young readers by hosting seminars, debates, and other events for university students in the hope that these will get them interested in reading the news. The Junior Inquirer, a supplement for young readers, is distributed to over 100 schools three Saturdays of the month and carried nationwide with the main paper one Saturday a month. Soliven's Star, meanwhile, has school-based contests designed to boost circulation among students.

More importantly, the Inquirer, the market leader and arguably the most influential newspaper in the country, has taken measures to restore reader's confidence, including printing a daily Corrections section and appointing an in-house Reader's Advocate to sift through and respond to readers' complaints. The paper has also encouraged reader feedback, not just through traditional methods like letters and email, but also text messages. "On the credibility side, we're doing all we can," says Romualdez. "We realized that our core content is news, so we need to do what we can in terms of accuracy and fairness."

Hopefully, these efforts will help mend the tattered credibility of newspapers. But these have to be accompanied by efforts to raise professional and ethical standards and to produce outstanding reportage that can rival the best that the broadcast and new media are capable of. Sadly, most of the journalistic energies of newspapers are focused on producing day-to-day news, which the other media can deliver faster, if not necessarily better. The papers' competitive edge lies in their ability to write groundbreaking reports and to provide more background, depth, and context, all of which are sorely lacking in both broadcast and SMS-based news. At the moment, though, many editors agree that the dailies offer not much by way of value added to the news that's already in broadcast.

At the same time, newspapers have to behave in a consistently ethical and professional fashion. Otherwise, their efforts to raise standards will be canceled out by the perceived arrogance and recalcitrance of some star columnists and writers who refuse to be held accountable.

The other option, of course, is for newspapers to take the out-and-out commercial route: they can go tabloid all the way or take the cue from the glossies, which would mean watering down the hard-news news content and focusing more on entertainment and lifestyle, in the hope of attracting both more readers and advertisers, especially of lifestyle products. Some newspapers, like The Manila Standard, are already doing this: their front pages are a mix of both "hard" and "soft" news. Others have beefed up their lifestyle and entertainment sections and have also created new sections to cater to new consumer and advertising niches, such as those on golf, travel, electronic gadgets, and cars.