Adrian Monck pointed me in the direction of this interesting interview with Google CEO Eric Schmidt. In it, he offers some matter-of-fact wisdom about the future of newspapers, and the role Google has in their survival.

Google can’t make the cost of newsprint go down. We also can’t materially change the way consumers behave, and consumers are in fact moving their lives online. We have been able to send clicks to their Web sites, which they can monetize. So that provides some revenue. The problem is that doesn’t provide enough revenue to offset the loss of the other revenue.

It’s logic like that which makes me wonder why so many French papers are annoyed at Google for linking to them on Google News. Google gives them traffic. For free. Why complain?

This is an interesting thought, too:

One scenario says newspapers become part of larger companies. [The Washington Post, for example, is part of a company that makes a considerable portion of its money in the education business]. They’re clearly not going to fold because their value is too large.

I like this idea. Newspapers should be like games consoles. Microsoft makes a loss on the Xbox 360. But it makes a killing by selling games. If newspaper owners are desperate to keep their console — the print edition — alive, perhaps they should working on some better games. What are those games? I don’t know. Sorry.

Schmidt concludes:

[It] presents a real tragedy in the sense that journalism is a central part of democracy. And if it can’t be funded because of these business problems, then that’s a real loss in terms of voices and diversity. And I don’t think bloggers make up the difference. The historic model of investigative journalists in any industry is something that is very fundamental. So the question is, what can you do about this? And a fair statement is, we’re still looking for the right answer.