Christian A. Hendricks, 58

President, Local Media Consortium, Managing Partner, Extol Digital, Raleigh, NC First journalism job: Marketing Director, The Observer-dispatch, Utica, NY (1990) What are some of the most important lessons you have learned working in the news industry?

Journalism isn’t a business model. Instead, it is a public interest supported by readers and businesses believing independent, high-quality journalism is good for communities and our democracy. People want to know the truth and people want to be told stories. Journalists strive to tell truthful stories in a compelling and meaningful way. Journalists are, in a sense, chroniclers of community events and activities, whether the stories are good, bad, or ugly. What are your predictions for the future of news publishing?

Printed newspapers will disappear. Journalism won’t. Journalism has no skin in the delivery format game. It can be oral, visual, text or combinations } of all of these. The most efficient and effective forms with the most compelling information and stories, as determined by readers and businesses, will win in the end. I think, for the most part, print will lose to digital as the medium of choice. Local news as a community service, not as a highly profitable business, is where I believe local news publishers will find the preponderance of success in the future. As a result, general-interest news coverage delivered by local news outlets will become less popular, supplanted by increasingly compelling and in-depth stories affecting or about the locale.