Mario Garcia is 62, but he's not too crazy about older people. They make his professional life difficult - older traditional readers who scream and complain when he redesigns their newspaper. And editors who embrace these readers and resist change."If an editor can't be redesigned, he or she must be re-assigned," he said to a roomful of editors. He got a laugh from his audience, but there is seriousness behind the remark.
In 2012, the first generation of adults who never knew life before the internet will come of age. How is the newspaper industry going to cater for them? As always, Dr Garcia's presentation was full of sage advice and insight into the future of newspapers, as is expected from one of the world's premier newspaper and website designers.

But it was his remarks about the difficulty that editors have accepting change that hit hardest. "Convergence is a state of mind," he said at the 2015 Newsroom Conference at PPF Media's Futuroom complex in Prague. "Architects can tear down and rebuild a newsroom. You not only have to update the technology, but the people in the newsroom."

News consumers today are always connected. "If they don't get a text message for 10 minutes, they think the world doesn't love them anymore. We can laugh, but these are the people we have to cater for, the people who come to our papers and our websites."

Dr Garcia defined four groups of news consumers: Printnets, who are generally older than 35 and move easily among media. Digital Natives, who hardly remember life without the internet and come to print occasionally if at all. Promiscuous Users, who sample many news sources and are often unable to identify which website produced which news item. And traditional readers, older than 50, who read print newspapers every day and like the feel of it.

Each group presents specific challenges, but it is the traditional readers that Dr Garcia described as being overly influential. "You have a solid group of editors who cling to these people," he said. "But you cannot base the strategy of your media house on traditional readers." When you make changes, "they will scream, they will yell, but three weeks later, if they like your newspaper, they will take your newspaper."

It is imperative to change mindsets to reflect the changing media market and the changing consumer, including those who don't know pre-digital life. And it isn't enough to redesign the newsroom and claim to be offering converged multimedia. "It's like gymnastics. You've got to practice. You don't push a button and it's done," he said.

The 2015 Newsroom Conference, organised by the World Editors Forum, is being held in Prague on 1 and 2 October. Follow the conference on Twitter.