Can the New Media revolution make the Print Media Extinct?

When Guttenberg invented the printing press around 1440, it changed the whole game of academics and source of information sharing. Over the past hundreds of years, print became the major source of media across the world. Later when electronic media such as television and radio came into existence, print media still was strong with a good readership.

Literate people still preferred to read newspapers and magazines than to watch television or listen to the radio broadcast. Print media was the most trustworthy source of news. But later when the personal computers came into existence, little did we know that the upcoming internet will change the game.

The World Wide Web now is not just web, it is a whole world of every possible information available. When the internet became a normal thing to access from our smartphones, websites started creating content which was more readable. Many people started reading materials from their handy phones. Slowly, major print publications entered the new media world and started posting their news and other content on their websites. News Mobile applications became available on the app store and it became more easy and quick for readers to access news.

According to the latest Indian Readership Survey report of 2017, 39% of Indians read newspapers and 20% readers prefer to read the newspaper online. When the number of readers in India for newspapers is still on a good scale, we cannot ignore the fact that online media is gaining its popularity.

Print media is a source of reliable information which we can trust upon. But if we look at online media and several websites posting various information, it can also be a source of fake news. We can never completely trust the information online as it might be a deliberately created content to raise an argument or propaganda among youth. Also, plagiarism is somewhere played with as such online tools cannot fully check the copied content as writers can edit the same sentence in a different way with the same meaning.

New Media slowly started taking traditional media’s place by creating content which was less time consuming and more digitally attractive. It was no more than old school information with jargon. The actual news style was changed into different writing style which included writing into pointers which were easy to read and look at.

Whereas print is reliable, it takes a whole day to process and to reach out to the public for the latest news and information. Online media is faster as we can access the news within a few minutes and hours.

Digital publications of magazines and newspapers are an alternate for print publications as well for normal people who have access to design digitally and give it a whole new shape.

The process of publication of print media is a lot of time-consuming and takes manpower, whereas online media requires an internet connection along with smart devices such as a laptop, PC or mobile phone.

Adverting also affects when people are driving more towards the online world. Newspapers and magazines get affected on a revenue basis as advertisers are inclined towards the websites for sponsored posts or ads. 

As a kid, we were taught to make a newspaper reading as a habit as it improves general knowledge and vocabulary. To prepare for any competitive exam, students still prefer to read the newspaper. Online content is more of an easy to read, a new cool way of attracting the audience.

Several newspaper publications such as Hindustan Times, The Times of India, Navbharat Times is publishing both printed and online content. Many websites such as ScoopWhoop, The Quint, etc. are much famous among the youth for any kind of information.

Aspiring journalists and mass communication students are more driven towards new media as it has easily available job opportunities. It also doesn’t require much fieldwork as compared to print media.  The casual work environment in online publication companies attracts freshers because of the fun work culture.

As we are becoming more technologically advanced day by day, we are exploring more bits of the online media world and this new revolution is slowly taking over the traditional media.