Discussing the problem that newspapers are being increasingly challenged by web start-ups causing readership and loss of classified advertising revenue, he said the following:

Reader options:
"The Internet now does a lot of information on all sorts of subjects better than newspapers. I shouldn't be saying this live to the world outside, I should be keeping this a secret, but a lot of people have twigged to this."

"We have reached a point where the newspaper is in the middle of a fragmented world of interest groups aligned around zones of politics and passions and geography."

Craiglist as newspaper’s nemesis:
"A lot is down to Craig Newmark, an archetypal West Coast liberal who is almost single-handedly destroying the American newspaper industry with Craigslist.org" with its free advertising model that threatens the way newspapers may be used in advertising.

Rusbridger said the Craigslist model is “a difficult model to beat” because advertising listing are free to place and free to view.  He compared Craigslist to the New York Times, saying Craigslist only charges for want ads in three out of 192 cities with a fee of $25, while the New York Times charges $300.

"Comment used to be our field. Now there are web sites for fragmented audiences who want stuff they are interested in by people who are like them... However fragmented you want to be, it can be done better than a newspaper. What does a newspaper do?"

On the new Guardian site “Comment is Free”:
On the recently launched Comment is Free, all the content is created for free with no subscription firewall (like that which exists for comment in the The New York Times for example)

“It contains comment from the paper, the editor's picks, and then other people's views. All contributors have a blog. Most are not being paid, unless they are columnists. But the site is a level playing field where paid commentators are ranked alongside unpaid and the user can see how many times an article has been viewed,” said Mbites.com.

"Where does the newspaper sit in society?":
“If newspapers can't afford to report the news because the economic support has been taken away; If chunks are taken away editorially; If people follow only their own fragmented range of interests, then papers are in trouble. But for a society to work well, citizens have to be informed across a range of subjects. Politicians, in fact, would find it hard to govern without informed citizens. And newspapers stand outside government and can critique it” (Mbites)

"I will never lose sight of the role of newspapers and their role," said Rusbridger. "In some ways it's the most exciting time to be in newspapers. There's a revolution as big as Gutenberg and Caxton going on, but in many ways it's also frightening."

Another opinion according Norman Pearlstine, senior advisor for Time Warner:

Saying the best times for newspapers are over, Pearlstine said “For the last 100 years, newspapers have operated in a basic monopoly environment, especially in their individual cities. And this absence of competition has made them slow to respond to the growth of the Internet and the consequent changes in consumer behaviour."

He also said the industry needs to recognise the fact that technology is fundamental in changing what media is today, and media practitioners should adapt to these changes accordingly. “We still view websites largely as a brand extension of traditional media. This should change.” (Agencyfaqs!)

Sources: Journalism.co.uk and Mbites.com [Rusbridger], Agencyfaqs! [Pearlstine]