While at Le Web last month, I met up with Marissa Mayer backstage, where we chatted about the future of newspapers in the era of Google

Newspapers need to become more “webby” to keep up in an increasingly disrupted news industry, Marissa said.

Consumers demand hyper personalised news streams and digital portability, so newspapers need to change their overall digital strategy. One medium does not transfer directly to another, Marissa said, so the idea of putting traditional articles on the web is simply wrong.

Newspapers should learn from a site like Wikipedia to develop living stories which will allow continuous updating while avoiding repetition and internal search competition. Newspapers have handled the transition fairly well so far, but they still have a long way to go, Marissa said.

Directly addressing the critics of Google who work in newspaper, Marissa said they should not see Google as the enemy but as part of the solution.

True or just Google’s take?