Betting the future of The Guardian on print would have been "truly reckless", according to editor Alan Rusbridger.

Writing exclusively in the July edition of Press Gazette magazine, Rusbridger insisted the shift to a "digital future" did not mean The Guardian was turning its back on print, pointing out that its most of its revenues still come from its print edition.

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The media joint venture of Avusa Media and Pearson, BDFM announced plans to discontinue publication of its "Big News for the Business Owner" newspaper soon, according to a report by MediaUpdate.co.za yesterday.

"Closing Big News does not mean the company has lost faith in the small business market; it is just that, perhaps, under the circumstances, Big News had the odds stacked against it," BDFM managing director Mzi Malunga was quoted as saying by BizCommunity.com. "I would like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to the hard working Big News team, especially its editor, Samantha Kalisa."

Since its launch in 1996, the South African newspaper has been providing a voice to small and medium business owners, while helping them grow their businesses and create jobs. It has also been a part of the BDFM media brands that include titles such as Business Day, the Financial Mail, Summit TV and The Home Channel, MediaUpdate.co.za reported yesterday.

Around 80,000 copies of the newspaper have been distributed monthly, BizCommunity.com reported. Malunga further added that the "details of the newspaper's winding-down process will be communicated to the rest of the business in coming weeks."

Ross Dawson, chairman of media industry analysts Future Exploration Network, predicts that newspapers in the United Kingdom will be "extinct" by 2019, as the job newspapers do will be transitioned to other channels, The Drum reported today. According to Dawson, print editions of papers will cease to exist by the end of the decade in some countries but will survive past 2040 in others.

Of course, Dawson isn't the first to predict the demise of print. And, as MediaGuardian's Roy Greenslade pointed out: "Anyone who has dared to put a date to the disappearance of newsprint has, naturally enough, suffered from much scorn."

Image via RossDawson.com

Dawson's Newspaper Extinction Timeline suggests that in the United States, print will die out by 2017. In the UK and Iceland, print may live up to 2019. Newspapers in their "current form" might become "irrelevant" in Canada and Norway in 2020. A significant part of Europe may see the demise of newsprint by 2030, he states.

The Independent's new daily i launches today. Billed as the first quality daily to launch in Britain in 25 years, it aims to provide a full news service "in a way that is fully accessible," Independent deputy editor Adam Leigh told the Editors Weblog. It is not a new paper in terms of content, rather will almost entirely consist of repurposed and repackaged Independent content, presented in a new and more concise format. Media commentator for the Guardian Roy Greenslade described it as it as "quite simply, a populist alter ego to the Independent."

"Daily briefing is a phrase that we've used a lot while we've been developing it," said Leigh, who will be specifically involved with i, while the Independent's other deputy editor Dan Gledhill focuses on the main edition of the Independent. However, he stressed, it is more than that; it is "a newspaper first and foremost and it will cover a range of different content for a range of moments throughout the day." Many of the news stories near the front of the paper will only be one paragraph long, but throughout the 56-page paper there will also be longer pieces, or "places to pause," as Leigh put it.

For more on this story, visit our sister publication, editorsweblog.org.