As readership and revenues shift onto the Net, experts said on Tuesday that top news media executives must seek new digital opportunities without neglecting their traditional print publications by rushing headlong into cyberspace.

The second annual World Digital Media Trends report, released at a meeting of the World organization of Newspapers, said the digital platforms of newspapers are growing at a double-digit rate worldwide, as the world increasingly goes on line. The report, compiled with the help of 71 research groups, said digital and mobile advertising revenues are expected to increase 12-fold from 2002 to 2011, to about $150 billion worldwide.

The report said the number of wireless device subscriptions is expected to increase threefold to 3.4 billion from 2002 to 2011, the number of homes with broadband is likely to rise 10-fold in the same period, and the mobile telephone customer base has increased from 945 million in 2001 to 2.6 billion in 2006.

The report said

one study says that in some countries “the Web will become the primary news and knowledge source within five years, while newspapers will lose the dominating position they have held for more than a century.” Newspapers cannot count on their print editions alone to keep them solvent, the report said.

However, organization President Gavin O’Reilly warned that newspapers should not rush unprepared into new mobile and World Wide Web markets and said about 60 percent of the new revenues goes to two companies, the search engine giants Google and Yahoo.

“The Net is a wonderful place whether you know what you are looking for,” he said at a panel debate about digital media’s impact on newspaper revenues. “But we run the risk that running headlong into digital will turn our dollars into pennies.”

Newspaper companies must additionally continue to invest in the medium they know best — printed editions –…

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