Some people think the Internet has the capacity to put all of us out of business, or at least out of our businesses as we know them today. You in the audience might share in that opinion.

What I hope you will hear in the next 90 minutes is an interesting discussion about the relative economic strength of these traditional forms of news publishing. And we also will gaze into the crystal ball and address the likely impact the Internet will have on how we approach the newsgathering business, and how people will get their news in the future.

Given my job as CEO of Knight Ridder, whose sole business is the operation of 31 newspapers and 37 affiliated Web sites, it won't surprise you to learn that I believe the print medium - that is, the daily newspaper - has a lot of staying power.

America's daily newspapers remain the premier mass medium in the country. On a given weekday, we reach more than 105 million American adults, a substantially higher number than the average prime-time TV show, which reaches about 75 million. On Sundays, newspapers reach on average 122 million adults. In other words, weekdays, about 60 percent of American adults read a newspaper, and on Sundays, about 70 percent.

Newspapers have not suffered the fractionalization of audiences the way broadcast media have. And this translates into a powerful mass medium -which remains very attractive to advertisers who need efficient ways to reach large numbers of customers in a single, efficient stroke.

In a typical American town, the daily newspaper has the largest newsgathering force and the largest ad sales force of any medium - another potent piece of the newspaper industry's staying power. Another strength is that our stock in trade is providing local news and advertising information -information that is not easily found elsewhere in comparable depth or as well packaged.

So, am I bullish about the future of newspapers? You bet. If I weren't, Knight Ridder would not have invested more than $2 billion in acquiring five newspaper companies in the past three years. We also have invested a great deal in new press projects--and the life span of a new press is easily 40 years. So, yes, I see a lot of life in the daily newspaper for a long time to come.

Despite all that has been said about the newspaper industry being a dying business, profits have been remarkably robust the past few years, which affords the industry the wherewithal to invest in the future.

These advantages notwithstanding, the Internet poses an interesting challenge for newspapers, and not merely a theoretical one. Companies like Microsoft, AOL, Yahoo and Excite clearly have their sights set on the classified advertising business, which is a hugely important piece of the newspaper business. And, increasingly, people are turning more frequently to the Internet for their news. According to a survey by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, the number of people who get their news from the Internet is rising rapidly. The researchers estimated that almost as many people surf the Internet on a typical weekday as spend time reading a magazine.

About 20 percent of American adults, or an estimated 36 million people, get news from the Internet at least once a week - about three times as many as two years ago when Pew conducted a similar survey. Most of this time spent on the Internet, so far, has come at the expense of the broadcast industry.

For the newspaper industry, I see opportunities in a couple of key areas:

First: Because the Internet provides access to vast storehouses of data, newspaper companies can -as we have begun to do at Knight Ridder papers--create directories of information. By that, I mean Yellow Pages kinds of directories, which is a business newspapers have not traditionally tapped into, but now, with the Internet, we can and are.

The second key area involves database marketing. Given the tracking abilities on the Internet, we can build databases that will enable us to serve our advertisers better, giving them more information about consumers than they have ever had.

Forgive me for talking so much about Knight Ridder, but I believe Knight Ridder's specific efforts give you the flavor of what's possible on the Internet --from the perspective of a for-profit publishing company. We have not been shy about investing in the development of online services. When the World Wide Web debuted earlier in the '90s, we fairly quickly established Web sites for each of our newspapers. We also established Knight Ridder New Media, which now consists of 50 employees, whose job is to help our newspapers develop online services that will extend the newspaper franchise, particularly in the classified advertising category. We recently joined with the Chicago Tribune, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Gannett and several other newspaper companies to form Classified Ventures, a joint venture focused on delivering classified advertising nationally and locally.

Finally, the entrepreneurial culture of the Internet is something that we want to know a lot more about. That's why we're moving our headquarters later this year to San Jose, the heart of Silicon Valley, so we can more fully immerse our company's leaders in the entrepreneurial culture that is reshaping the information-delivery business.

I would love to be able stand before you and tell you that everything we are doing is guaranteed to succeed. I can't. But I remain confident that newspapers are well positioned to enjoy a healthy future for a long time to come. I can guarantee that the Internet will be a major social force.

With that in mind, these are some of the questions I would like my colleagues to address in the time we have remaining: What assets do traditional publishers of news and advertising have that can be turned to their advantage in the Internet age? What is going to happen to the traditional news media as the digital age comes to full fruition? And when will all of this happen?