If there was an Uncle Sam-style campaign to recruit media executives into the “digital first” movement, John Paton would probably win the role of poster boy in a landslide. Even before he became the CEO of the giant MediaNews Group chain, Paton was calling on the media industry to give up its attachment to print and embrace the web and digital media — and he reiterated that message in a fire-and-brimstone speech to a journalism group in Toronto, Ontario recently. The bottom line, according to Paton, is that the time for deliberation is over: media entities of all kinds must give up the “information gatekeeper” model, he said, or they will surely perish. Read more »