HAS THE COMING OF THE
INTERNET HAS DISPLACED THE NEED FOR NEWSPAPER PUBLISHING?
INTRODUCTION
In the the
field of mass communication, the medium used in the transmission of the
messages emerged in at different times. Each inovations came as a result of
improvement in technologies especially during the industrial revolution, with
different advantages and disadvantages attached to all. The newspaper came as a
result of the invention of printing press by a German, Johann Gutenberg in the
1440s and indeed even back then in Roman Empire. Radio came later follow by
television before the internet. Before the coming of the newspaper, books are
the first source of information and knowledge.
As the public turns toward participatory forms of online
journalism, and as mainstream news outlets adopt more of those interactive
features in their online versions, the media environment is shifting, slowly
and incrementally, away from the broadcast model where the few communicate to
the many, toward a more inclusive model in which publics and audiences also
have voices. This has
brought us to our question whether the coming of the internet will really
displace the need for newspaper publishing.
HISTORY OF THE MASS MEDIA: From Writing To Browsing.
THE PRINT MEDIA
Newspaper
A newspaper is a regularly scheduled publication
containing news of current events, informative articles, diverse features and
advertising. It usually is printed on relatively inexpensive, low-grade paper
such as newsprint. The newspaper
came fırst in 16th century by
Benjamin Franklin known as the Pennsylvanian or Franklien stove. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the print media was the most
dominant form of media. Print media is made up of newspapers, newsletters and
magazines. It's any communication intended for the general public that's
lightweight, portable and printed on paper. Print media in the United States
essentially began with The Federalist Papers, which were published and
distributed to promote the ratification of the Constitution. For nearly 200
years, newspapers were politically run. But by the mid-19th century, print
media had evolved.
The evolution was due to several factors, including the
invention of the telegraph. The telegraph allowed newspapers to receive a
steady stream of news dispatches from all over the world. New steam-powered
printing presses allowed for higher supplies, while growing literacy rates led
to higher demand. As a result, more independent newspapers joined the growing
print media field and some newspapers soon reached circulations in the
millions.
By the latter half of the 19th century, competition led
to yellow journalism. This is journalism that exploits, distorts or
exaggerates in order to attract readers. Widespread support for the
Spanish-American War can be attributed to yellow journalism. President McKinley
wanted to avoid a war, but sensationalized articles portrayed him as weak and
encouraged the war in order to give Cubans independence.
Magazines
Magazine circulation increased during this time as well,
leading to our nation's first investigative journalism. Muckrakers were a group
of journalists who exposed injustices and political corruption in the late 19th
and early 20th centuries. In fact, the muckraking tactics of two young Washington
Post reporters exposed the Watergate scandal of the 1970s, and so
muckraking is common today.
THE BROADCAST MEDIA
This brings us to the broadcast media. The
broadcast media includes radio and television which their reports are
presented timely.
Radio
The first broadcast media is the radio giving the audience sound aids thereby making the
information easier to be disseminated to those who find it dificult to read. By the end of the 19th century, radio was invented, but only used as a
two-way communication system in industrial and military settings. In the 1920s,
several manufacturers decided to mass-produce radio receivers for sale to the
general public. As an incentive for people to buy radios, these same
manufacturers created radio stations. That's why, for example, General Electric
owns NBC. Franklin Roosevelt was the first
president to regularly use radio addresses. He broadcast a series of 'fireside
chats' between 1933 and 1944 in order to discuss various political issues, such
as the banking crisis. Throughout World War II, radio was the main source of
up-to-the-minute news information.
Television
Then came television. Though invented in the 1920s,
television wasn't marketed to the public until the late 1940s. It quickly grew
to be a popular source of news and information. By 1952, the Democratic and
Republican national conventions were televised. That same year, Dwight
Eisenhower effectively used the first political adverts in his successful
presidential bid.
In 1960, John Kennedy and Richard Nixon appeared in
televised presidential candidate debates, with Kennedy receiving rave reviews
for being photogenic and poised on camera. Also in the 1960s, television news
stations regularly aired footage from the Vietnam War, earning it the nickname
of the 'television war.' Television news wasn't as highly regarded as print
news, though views changed after President Kennedy's assassination in 1963. The
extended, and more immediate, television news coverage of this historic event
served to propel television news into the mainstream.
Radio and television programs are distributed
through radio broadcasting over frequency bands that are highly regulated by
the Federal Communications
Commission in the United States. Such regulation includes
determination of the width of the bands, range, licencing, types of receivers
and transmitters used, and acceptable content. Cable programs are often broadcast
simultaneously with radio and television programs, but have a more limited
audience. By coding signals and having a cable converter box in homes, cable also enables subscription-based channels and pay-per-view services.
The Internet
The Internet (also
known simply as "the Net" or less precisely as "the Web")
is a more interactive medium of mass media, and can be briefly described as
"a network of networks". It is a global system of interconnected
computer networks that use the standard Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP) to serve
billions of users worldwide. It is a network of networks that consists of
millions of private, public, academic, business, and government networks, of
local to global scope, that are linked by a broad array of electronic, wireless
and optical networking technologies. Specifically, it transmit data by packet switching using the standard Internet Protocol (IP). It consists of
millions of smaller domestic, academic, business, and governmental networks,
which together carry various information and
services, such as email, online chat, file transfer, and the interlinked web pages and other documents of the World Wide Web.
Toward the end of the 20th century, the advent of the
World Wide Web marked the first era in which most individuals could have a
means of exposure on a scale comparable to that of mass media. Anyone with a web site has the potential to address a global
audience, although serving to high levels of web traffic is still relatively expensive.
It is possible that the rise of peer-to-peer technologies may have begun
the process of making the cost of bandwidth manageable. Although a vast amount
of information, imagery, and commentary (i.e. "content") has been
made available, it is often difficult to determine the authenticity and
reliability of information contained in web pages (in many cases,
self-published). The invention of the Internet has also allowed breaking news
stories to reach around the globe within minutes. This rapid growth of
instantaneous, decentralized communication is often deemed likely to change
mass media and its relationship to society.
"Cross-media" means the idea of distributing
the same message through different media channels. A similar idea is expressed
in the news industry as "convergence". Many authors understand
cross-media publishing to be the ability to publish in both print and on the web without manual conversion
effort. An increasing number of wireless devices
with mutually incompatible data and screen formats make it even more difficult
to achieve the objective “create once, publish many”.
INTERNET AS FORM OF MASS MEDIA
The Internet is quickly becoming the center of mass
media. Everything is becoming accessible via the internet. Rather than picking
up a newspaper, or watching the 10 o'clock news, people can log onto the
internet to get the news they want, when they want it. For example, many
workers listen to the radio through the Internet while sitting at their desk.
Even the education system
relies on the Internet. Teachers can contact the entire class by sending one
e-mail. They may have web pages on which students can get another copy of the
class outline or assignments. Some classes have class blogs in which students
are required to post weekly, with students graded on their contributions.
When broadcasting is done via the Internet the term webcasting is often used. In 2004 a new
phenomenon occurred when a number of technologies combined to produce podcasting. Podcasting is an asynchronous
broadcast/narrowcast medium, with one of the main proponents being Adam Curry and his associates the Podshow.
Through the 1970s and 1980s, satellite transmissions made
live news coverage more accessible from points around the world. This led to
live transmission, or fairly immediate coverage, of important political events
such as the 1981 attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan and the
1989 fall of the Berlin Wall. Today, of course, we are accustomed to and expect
live news coverage.
Sometimes, the
mass media do try to compliment each other and sometimes they clashes.
The compliment each other in the sense that they all tried to get the necessary
information to the society who are desperately hungry for news which they use
to shape their lives.
THE INTERNET: A
SLAP TO THE PRINT MEDIA
The advent of Information Communication Technology (ICT) has brought
forth a set of opportunities and challenges for print media (Garrison, 1996).
The presence of new media and the Internet in particular, has posed a challenge
to print media, especially the printed newspaper (Domingo & Heinonen,
2008). Analysts in industrial organizations and businesses are of the view that
the U.S. newspaper industry is suffering through what could be its worst financial
crisis since the Great Depression (Barthelemy et al., 2011).
In one of its special reports: The News Industry, July
9th 2011, The Economist of London look critically at the future of print media
(the newspaper), it observed that the internet, especially, the social media
(Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Google, etc.) has revolutionarised news as we knew
it, and warns that more changes are in the offing. The survey observed that
there is a gradual decline in the news paper business in the developed parts of
the world, while emerging countries such as India, China, Brazil, and South
Africa are experience growth in the sector. This, the special report observed,
is partially because of the penetration of the internet and economic growth.
While developed countries economies are passing through tumultuous period,
those of the emerging countries are prospering, while the use of internet is
high in the developed countries, it is lower in the emerging world.
The internet revolution has also a propound effect on advertisement
revenue, the most important source of funds for most papers, by reducing the
amount of advert revenue that is going to print media as it directed some of it
towards internet advertisement. To quote the words of the survey, “Clearly
something dramatic has happened to the news business. That something is, of
course, the internet, which has disrupted this industry just as it has
disrupted so many others. By undermining advertising revenue, making news
reports a commodity and blurring the boundaries between previously distinct
news organizations, the internet has upended newspapers’ traditional business
model.”
Advertising
revenues are tumbling due to the severe economic downturn, while readership
habits are changing as consumers turn to the Internet for free news and
information. Some major newspaper chains are burdened by heavy debt loads. As
in the past, major newspapers have declared bankruptcy as several big city
papers shut down, lay off reporters and editors, impose pay reductions, cut the
size of the physical newspaper, or turn to Web-only publication (Kirchhoff,
2009).
The electronic
media have also affected the way newspapers get and circulate their news. Since
1999, almost 90% of daily newspapers in the United States have been actively
using online technologies to search for articles and most of them also create
their own news websites to reach new markets (Garrison, 2001).
New communication technology i.e. the internet, including
accessible online publishing software and evolving mobile device technology,
means that citizens have the potential to observe and report more immediately
than traditional media outlets do. Swarms of amateur online journalists are
putting this technology to use, on open publishing sites such as in the media
and on countless weblogs, adding a grassroots dimension to the media landscape.
Bloggers and other amateur journalists are scooping mainstream news outlets as
well as pointing out errors in mainstream articles, while people who have been
made subjects of news articles are responding online, posting supplementary
information to provide context and counterpoints. Increasingly, the public is
turning to online sources for news, reflecting growing trust in alternative
media.
THE DECLINE IN NEWSPAPER PUBLISHING IN
OTHER PARTS OF THE WORLD
The decline of
newspapers has been widely debated as the industry has faced down soaring
newsprint prices, slumping adverts sales, the loss of much classified
advertising and precipitous drops in circulation. In recent years the number of
newspapers slated for closure, bankruptcy or severe cutbacks has
risen—especially in the United States, where the industry has shed a fifth of
its journalists since 2001. Revenue has plunged while competition from internet
media has squeezed older print publishers.
This has
strictly affected only the United States or the English- speaking markets
though there is a large rise in sales for countries like China, Japan and
India. The debate has become more urgent lately, as a deepening recession has
cut profits, and as once-explosive growth in newspaper web revenues has leveled
off, forestalling what the industry hoped would become an important source of
revenue. One issue is whether the newspaper industry is being hit by a cyclical
trough and will recover, or whether new technology has rendered newspapers
obsolete in their traditional format. To survive, newspapers are considering
combining and other options, although the outcome of such partnerships has been
criticized. Despite these problems, newspaper companies with significant brand
value, which have published their work online, have a significant rise in
viewership.
Newsroom of The
New York Times, 1942 said the newspaper industry has always been cyclical, and
the industry has weathered previous troughs. But while television's arrival in
the 1950s presaged the decline of newspapers' importance as most people's
source of daily news, the explosion of the internet in the 1990s and the first
decade of the 21st century increased the panoply of media choices available to
the average reader while further cutting into newspapers' hegemony as the
source of news. Both television and the Internet bring news to the consumer
faster and in a more visual style than newspapers, which are constrained by
their physical form and the need to be physically manufactured and distributed.
The
competing mediums also offer advertisers the opportunity to use moving images
and sound. And the internet search function allows advertisers to tailor their
pitch to readers who have revealed what information they are seeking—an
enormous advantage. The Internet has also gone a step further than television
in eroding the advertising income of newspapers, as – unlike broadcast media –
it proves a convenient vehicle for classified advertising, particularly in
categories such as jobs, vehicles, and real estate. Free services like
Craigslist have decimated the classified advertising departments of many
newspapers, some of which depended on classifieds for 70% of their ad
revenue.
Press baron
Rupert Murdoch once described the profits flowing from his stable of newspapers
as "rivers of gold." But, said Murdoch several years later,
"sometimes rivers dry up." "Simply put," wrote Buffalo News
owner Warren Buffett, "if cable and satellite broadcasting, as well as the
internet, had come along first, newspapers as we know them probably would never
have existed."
As their
revenues have been squeezed, newspapers have also been increasingly assailed by
other media taking away not only their readers, but their principal sources of
profit. Many of these 'new media' are not saddled with expensive union
contracts, printing presses, delivery fleets and overhead built over decades.
Many of these competitors are simply 'aggregators' of news, often derived from
print sources, but without print media's capital- intensive overhead. Some
estimates put the percentage of online news derived from newspapers at 80%.
Many newspapers
also suffer from the broad trend toward "fragmentation" of all media
– in which small numbers of large media outlets attempting to serve substantial
portions of the population are replaced by an abundance of smaller and more
specialized organizations, often aiming only to serve specific interest groups.
So- called narrowcasting has splintered audiences into smaller and smaller
slivers. But newspapers have not been alone in this: the rise of cable
television and satellite television at the expense of network television in
countries such as the United States and United Kingdom is another example of
this fragmentation.
Performance in
the market (2000– present) United States Since the beginning of 2009, the
United States has seen a number of major metropolitan dailies shuttered or
drastically pruned after no buyers emerged, including The Rocky Mountain News,
closed in February, and The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, reduced to a bare-bones
internet operation. The San Francisco Chronicle narrowly averted closure when
employees made steep concessions.
In Detroit,
both newspapers, The Detroit Free Press and The Detroit News, slashed home
delivery to three days a week, while prodding readers to visit the newspapers'
internet sites on other days. In Tucson, Arizona, the state's oldest newspaper,
the Tucson Citizen, said it would cease publishing on March 21, 2009, when
parent Gannett Company failed to find a buyer.
A number of
other large, financially troubled newspapers are seeking buyers. One of the few
large dailies finding a buyer is The San Diego Union-Tribune, which agreed to
be sold to a private equity firm for what The Wall Street Journal, called
"a rock-bottom price" of less than $50 million – essentially a real
estate purchase. (The newspaper was estimated to have been worth roughly $1
billion as recently as 2004.).
The Sun Times
Media Group, publisher of the eponymous bankrupt newspaper, fielded a meager $5
million cash bid, plus assumption of debt, for assets last claimed worth $310
million. Large newspaper chains filing bankruptcy since December 2008 include
the Tribune Company, the Journal Register Company, the Minneapolis Star
Tribune, Philadelphia Newspapers LLC, Sun- Times Media Group and Freedom
Communications.
Some newspaper
chains that have purchased other papers have seen stock values plummet. The
McClatchy Company, the nation's third–largest newspaper company, was the only
bidder on the Knight-Ridder chain of newspapers in 2005. Since its $6.5 billion
Knight-Ridder purchase, McClatchy's stock has lost more than 98% of its value.
McClatchy subsequently announced large layoffs and executive pay cuts, as its
shares fell into penny stock territory. (Although McClatchy faced delisting
from the New York Stock Exchange for having a share price below $1, in
September 2009, it was able to overcome this threat. Others have not been so
lucky. In 2008 and 2009, three other U.S. newspaper chains have seen their
shares delisted by the NYSE).
Other newspaper
company valuations have been similarly punished: the stocks of Gannett Company,
Lee Enterprises and Media General traded at less than two dollars per share by
March 2009, with The Washington Post Company's stock faring better than most,
thanks to diversification into educational training programs –and away from
publishing. Similarly, UK -based Pearson PLC, owner of The Financial Times,
increased earnings in 2008 despite a drop in newspaper profits, thanks to
diversification away from publishing.
The New York
Times Company, hard-pressed for cash as its shares slid below five dollars per
share, suspended its dividend, sold and leased back part of its headquarters,
and sold preferred shares to Mexican businessman Carlos Slim in return for a
cash infusion. But the credit rating agencies still cut the rating on Times
Company's debt to junk status, and the cash crunch at The Times prompted it to
threaten to shutter its Boston Globe unless workers made deep concessions. Even
News Corp, the diversified media holding company overseen by Rupert Murdoch,
was hit, forced to write down much of the value of newspaper publisher Dow
Jones & Co. that it purchased for $5 billion in 2007. Apparently shelved
are plans announced by Murdoch at the time of the acquisition to expand The
Wall Street Journal's newsroom.
The
deterioration in the United States newspaper market led one senator to
introduce a bill in March 2009 allowing newspaper companies to restructure as
non-profit corporations with an array of tax breaks. The Newspaper
Revitalization Act would allow newspapers to operate as nonprofits similar to
public broadcasting companies, barring them from making political endorsements.
In the United
Kingdom, newspaper publishers have been similarly hit. In late 2008 The
Independent announced job cuts. In January the chain Associated Newspapers sold
a controlling stake in the London Evening Standard as it announced a 24%
decline in 2008 ad revenues. In March 2009 parent company Daily Mail and
General Trust said job cuts would be deeper than expected, spanning its
newspapers, which include the Leicester Mercury, the Bristol Evening Post and
the Derby Telegraph. One industry report predicted that 1 in 10 UK print
publications would cut its frequency of publication in half, go online only or
shut in 2009.
Across the
world Newspaper market in Salta (Argentina).The challenges facing the industry
are not limited to the United States, or even English-speaking markets.
Newspapers in Switzerland and the Netherlands, for instance, have lost half of
their classified advertising to the internet. At its annual convention slated
for May, 2009, in Barcelona, Spain, the World
Association of
Newspapers has titled the convention's subject "Newspapers Focus on Print
& Advertising Revenues in Difficult Times."
In September
2008, the World Association of Newspapers called for regulators to block a
proposed Google– Yahoo advertising partnership, calling it a threat to
newspaper industry revenues worldwide. The WAN painted a stark picture of the
threat posed to newspapers by the search engine giants. "Perhaps never in
the history of newspaper publishing has a single, commercial entity threatened
to exert this much control over the destiny of the press," said the
Paris-based global newspaper organization of the proposed pact. But there are
bright spots in the world market for newspapers.
At its 2008
convention, held in Gothenburg, Sweden, the World Association of Newspapers
released figures showing newspaper circulations and advertising had actually
climbed in the previous year. Newspaper sales were up nearly 2.6% the previous
year, and up 9.4% over the past five years. Free daily newspapers, noted the
WAN, accounted for nearly 7% of all global newspaper circulation – and a
whopping 23% of European newspaper circulation. Of the world's 100 best–selling
daily newspapers, 74 are published in Asia–with China, Japan and India accounting
for 62 of those. Sales of newspapers rose in Latin America , Asia and the
Middle East, but fell in other regions of the world, including Western Europe ,
where the proliferation of free dailies helped bolster overall circulation
figures. While internet revenues are rising for the industry, the bulk of its
web revenues come from a few areas, with most revenue generated in the United
States, Western Europe and Asia–Pacific region.
CAUSES FOR
DECLINE
1.
Technological Change
The increasing
use of the internet search function, primarily through large engines such as
Google, has also changed the habits of readers. Instead of perusing general
interest publications, such as newspapers, readers are more likely to seek
particular writers, blogs or sources of information through targeted searches,
rendering the agglomeration of newspapers increasingly irrelevant. "Power
is shifting to the individual journalist from the news outlet with more people
seeking out names through search, email, blogs and social media," the
industry publication Editor & Publisher noted in summarizing a recent study
from the Project for Excellence in Journalism foundation. "When we go
online," writes columnist Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times,
"each of us is our own editor, our own gatekeeper." Where once the
ability to disseminate information was restricted to those with printing
presses or broadcast mechanisms, the internet has enabled thousands of
individual commentators to communicate directly with others through blogs or instant
message services.
Even open
journalism projects like Wikipedia have contributed to the reordering of the
media landscape, as readers are no longer restricted to established print
organs for information. But the search engine experience has left some newspaper
proprietors cold. "The aggregators and plagiarists will soon have to pay a
price for the co- opting of our content," Rupert Murdoch told the World
Media Summit in Beijing, China. "If we do not take advantage of the
current movement toward paid content, it will be the content creators – the
people in this hall – who will pay the ultimate price and the content
kleptomaniacs who triumph."
Critics of the
newspaper as a medium also argue that while today's newspapers may appear
visually different from their predecessors a century ago, in many respects they
have changed little and have failed to keep pace with changes in society. The
technology revolution has meant that readers accustomed to waiting for a daily
newspaper can now receive up-to-the-minute updates from web portals, bloggers
and new services such as Twitter. The expanding reach of broadband internet
access means such updates have become common place for many users, especially
the more affluent, an audience cultivated by advertisers.
The gloomy outlook
is not universal. In some countries, such as India, the newspaper remains more
popular than internet and broadcast media. Even where the problems are felt
most keenly, in North America and Europe, there have been recent success
stories, such as the dramatic rise of free daily newspapers , like those of
Sweden's Metro International, as well as papers targeted towards the Hispanic
market, local weekly shoppers, so-called hyper-local news. But these new
revenue streams, such as that from newspapers' proprietary web sites, are often
a fraction of the sums generated by the previous advertisement- and
circulation-driven revenue streams, and so newspapers have been forced to
curtail their overhead while simultaneously trying to entice new users. With
revenues plummeting, many newspapers have slashed news bureaus and journalists,
while still attempting to publish compelling content – much of it more
interactive, more lifestyle-driven and more celebrity-conscious.
In response to
falling advertising revenues and plunging circulation, many newspapers have cut
staff as well as editorial content, and in a vicious cycle, those cuts often
spur more and deeper circulation declines triggering more loss of ad revenues.
"No industry can cut its way to future success," says industry
analyst John Morton. "At some point the business must improve."
Overall, in the United States, average operating profit margins for newspapers
remain at 11%. But that figure is falling rapidly, and in many cases is
inadequate to service the debt that some newspaper companies took on during
better times. And while circulation has dropped 2% annually for years, that
decline has accelerated.
The circulation
decline, coupled with a 23% drop in 2008 newspaper ad revenues, have proven a
double whammy for some newspaper chains. Combined with the current recession,
the cloudy outlook for future profits has meant that many newspapers put on the
block have been unable to find buyers, who remain concerned with increasing
competition, dwindling profits and a business model that seems increasingly
antiquated."As succeeding generations grow up with the Web and lose the
habit of reading print," noted The Columbia Journalism Review in 2007,
"it seems improbable that newspapers can survive with a cost structure at
least 50% higher than their nimbler and cheaper Internet competitors." The
problem facing newspapers is generational: while in 2005 an estimated 70% of
older Americans read a newspaper daily, fewer than 20% of younger Americans
did. "It is the fundamental problem facing the industry," writes
newspaper analyst Morton. "It's probably not going away. And no one has
figured a way out."
2.
Financial Strategies
While newspaper
companies continue to produce much of the award- winning journalism, consumers
of that journalism are less willing to pay for it in a world where information
on the web is plentiful and free. Plans for web-based subscription services
have largely faltered, with the exception of financial outlets like The Wall
Street Journal, which have been able to generate substantial revenues from
subscribers whose subscriptions are often underwritten by corporate employers.
(Subscriptions to the Journal's paid website were up 7% in 2008).
Some
general-interest newspapers, even high-profile papers like The New York Times,
were forced to experiment with their initial paid internet subscription models.
Times Select, the Times initial pay service, lasted for exactly two years
before the company abandoned it. However, they later brought back paid services
and now allow visitors only 10 free articles per month before requiring them to
purchase a subscription. Within the industry, there is little consensus on the
best strategy for survival. Some pin their hopes on new technologies such as
e-paper or radical revisions of the newspaper such as the Daily Me; others,
like a recent cover story in Time magazine, have advocated a system that
includes both subscriptions as well as micro-payments for individual stories.
Some newspaper
analysts believe the wisest move is embracing the internet, and exploiting the
considerable brand value and consumer trust that newspapers have built over
decades. But revenues from online editions have come nowhere near matching
previous print income from circulation and advertising sales, since they get
only about one- tenth to one-twentieth the revenue for a web reader that they
do for a print reader; many struggle to maintain their previous levels of
reporting amidst eroding profits.
With profits
falling, many newspapers have cut back on their most expensive reporting
projects – overseas bureaus and investigative journalism. Some investigative
projects often take months, with their payoff uncertain. In the past, larger
newspapers often devoted a portion of their editorial budget to such efforts,
but with ad dollars drying up, many papers are looking closer at the
productivity of individual reporters, and judging speculative investments in
investigative reports as non-essential.
Some advocates
have suggested that instead of investigative reports funded by newspapers, that
non- profit foundations pick up the slack. The new non-profit Pro-Publica, a
$10–million–a–year foundation devoted solely to investigative reporting and
overseen by former Wall Street Journal editor Paul Steiger, for instance, hopes
that its 18 reporters will be able to release their investigative reports free,
courtesy of partnerships with such outlets as The New York Times, The Atlantic
and 60 Minutes. The Huffington Post also announced that it would set aside
funds for investigative reporting.
Other industry
observers are now clamoring for government subsidies to the newspaper industry.
Observers point out that the reliability and accountability of newspapers is
being replaced by a sea of anonymous bloggers, many with uncertain credentials
and points of view. Where once the reader of a daily newspaper might consume
reporting, for instance, by an established Cairo bureau chief for a major
newspaper, today that same reader might be directed by a search engine to an
anonymous blogger with cloudy allegiances, training or ability.
3.
Crisis
Newspaper
Association of America published data Ironically, these dilemmas facing the
newspaper industry come as its product has never been more sought-after.
"The peculiar fact about the current crisis," writes The New Yorker's
economics writer James Surowiecki, "is that even as big papers have become
less profitable they've arguably become more popular." As the demand
for news has exploded, so have consumers of the output of newspapers. Both
nytimes.com and washingtonpost.com , for instance, rank among the top 20 global
news sites. But those consumers are now reading newspapers online for free, and
although newspapers have been able to convert some of that viewership into
adverts dollars, it is a trickle compared to previous sources. At most
newspapers, web advertising accounts for only 10–15% of revenues.
Some observers
have compared the dilemma to that faced by the music industry. "What's
going on in the news business is a lot like what's happening with music,"
said editor Paul Steiger, a 43–year journalism veteran, who further added that
free distribution of content through the internet has caused "a total
collapse of the business model. The revenue streams that newspapers counted on
to subsidize their product have changed irrevocably: in 2008, according to a
study by the Pew Research Center, more people in the United States got their
news for free on the internet than paid for it by buying a newspaper or
magazine. "With newspapers entering bankruptcy even as their audience
grows, the threat is not just to the companies that own them, but also the news
itself," observed writer David Carr of The New York Times in a January
2009 column.
THE
DECLINE OF NEWSPAPER PUBLISHING IN NIGERIA
Information technology is changing the face of media
practice and journalism in general in the world today and Nigeria is not left
behind. The increasing impacts of new media in the dissemination of information
have given room to an increase in both professional and amateur journalism.
Yemi Olakitan examines the pros and cons of this on mass communication
practice. He wrote in an article which was first published in M2 Magazine on
27th April, 2012.
He said that, today the media is not limited to the
radio, television and the print alone. The Internet has created whole new
platforms for the dissemination of news and information within minutes. With
the click of a button, news and information can be posted on Facebook, twitter,
You Tube, a blog or website and the world can become aware of this recent
development instantaneously. This new media makes use of videos, audios, and
pictures and can disseminate information faster than any newspaper or
television house.
Things are no longer the same for traditional forms of
media in the world and Nigeria since global attention is now on Internet
reportage of news and events. All over the world, people want to see or read
the news on the Internet. The Internet has consolidated itself as a very
powerful platform that has changed the way the world communicates. No other
communication medium, has given a “Globalized” dimension to the world like the
Internet.
It is the Universal source of information for
millions of people, at home, at school, and at work, and it is actually the
most democratic of all the mass media. With a very low investment, anyone can
have a web page on the Internet; almost anybody can reach a very large audience
directly, fast and economically, no matter the size or location.
The upsurge in the use of the Internet has also given
rise to new media platforms, which have become increasingly popular. Leading
global news networks such as BBC and CNN now replay clips of non-professional
eyewitness account of events taken from either You Tube or Twitter. Today, a
media organization without an online presence is a huge local champion.
The popularity of social networking sites among
Nigerians, both young and old has made it necessary for media organizations to
make their presence felt on the Internet or they may soon be wiped out by
competing brands. It is not surprising that nearly all the major media houses
in Nigeria have created flamboyant websites with social networking sites to
complement them. Smarter media organizations are also making use of blogs, You
Tubes and many other tools to make their presence more pronounced. Today, it is
possible to read an entire Nigerian newspaper online.
In some cases, Internet advertising revenue is competing
favorably with traditional adverts placements. US Facebook guru, Joe Tripple,
said there are two million Nigerians on Facebook, out of the 400 million
worldwide.
The Internet has given room to a new form of media
freedom in information dissemination that has not been seen some few years ago.
Nigerians are able to post information faster than an average journalist could
send an article for production. The recent mass protests of the oil subsidy
removal had many users of twitters sharing picture s of dead or dying
protesters. Many Nigerians entered into meaningful discussions on the subjects
of corruption, police brutality, comparing figures and statistics on Facebook
and posting comments. The impacts of the new media have never been felt like
this before.
News coverage of the demonstrations by traditional media
has also been criticized. Many Nigerians covered the protests themselves
through social media tools. Nigerians no longer rely on government owned media
such as the National Television Authority, NTA that often broadcasts content
that favour the sitting government. Today, Nigerians post their own videos on
You Tube and inform friends on Facebook, Twitter or Skype. When armed robbers
attacked a luxury bus about a year ago and passengers were made to lie on the
highway and trucks ran over them. The police denied the incident. Days later,
pictures of the horror was posted on You Tube for all to see.
Even, President Goodluck Jonathan is not speared the use
of Facebook. A book, “My Friends and I,’’ chronicling numerous discussions
on national issues, which the president had with Nigerians on Facebook, was
published in 2011. The President was reported to have confessed that such
discussions have often influenced some of the decisions he has taken on various
national issues. Far from being a tool for mere social networking, Facebook and
twitter are increasingly competing with traditional media in the dissemination
of news and information.
Although, some Nigerian journalists still regard social
networking sites as a place to make friends and meet people, many are using
such sites for professional networking in the practice of journalism. In many
countries of the world where press freedom is lacking new media has come to the
rescue since it often cannot be silenced by draconian government decrees.
Journalists have embraced blogging, preferring to upload their stories and
pictures online.
Many have become their own editor and sub editor,
creating a robust online presence that often attract readers and advertisers
alike. The need for deploying these tools for instantaneous news coverage has
never been more urgent in Nigeria. Nigerians reporting corruption, insecurity,
police brutality, and journalists can operate without fear using New Media.
Global news reporting have been made easier with the use of new media tools
since journalists network faster than ever before from one part of the world to
another. It is easier for journalists to get information, quotes and interviews
through twitter, Facebook or Skype. Although some journalists still
acquire camera and digital voice recorders, mobile phones are been used for
professional news reporting and coverage.
However, social media can spread false information about
government and individuals as well. False Messages can circulate; often feeding
a rumor that can be completely untrue. Hackers have been reported to hack
government websites, including the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission.
(EFCC) Social media will continue to play a major role in news and discussions,
despite low incomes, as Nigeria has the continent’s top mobile phone market and
the largest online audience in Africa.
CONTOVERSIES
CAUSED BY THE COMING OF INTERNET TO NEWSPAPER INDUSTRIES
Some observers believe that the challenge faced by
conventional media, especially newspapers, has to do with the perfect storm of
the global economic crisis, dwindling readership and advertising dollars, and
the inability of newspapers to monetize their online efforts (Yap, 2009).
Newspapers, especially in the West and the US in particular, have lost the
lion's share of classified advertisement to the Internet. The situation
worsened when a depressed economy forced more readers to cancel their newspaper
subscriptions, and business firms to cut their advertising budget as part of
the overall cost-cutting measurements. As a result, closures of newspapers,
bankruptcy, job cuts and salary cuts are widespread (Mahmud, 2009).
This has made
some representatives of the US newspaper industry seek some sort of bail-out
from the government by allowing U.S. newspapers to recoup taxes they paid on
profits earlier this decade to help offset some of their current losses. This
is what they put forward to the Joint Committee of Congress (The Star Online,
September 2009).
Accusations are
being hurled at search engines giants by publishers such as Sir David Bell, who
categorically accused Google and Yahoo of “stealing” the contents of
newspapers. A similar allegation came from media mogul Rupert Murdoch in early
April 2009. "Should we be allowing Google to steal all our
copyrights?" asked the News Corp. Chief (Mysinchew, 2009). Likewise, Sam
Zell, owner of the Tribune Company that publishes the Chicago Tribune, the Los
Angeles Times and the Baltimore Sun claimed it was the newspapers in America
who allowed Google to steal their contents for nothing, but asked without the
contents what would Google do, and how profitable would Google be (mysinchew,
2009)?
Major giants in
the newspaper business have pointed their fingers at the 10-year old company
founded by two students in their university dormitory. Google is now so
powerful that media tycoons believe that it has been forcing the newspaper
industry out of business.
Google sees
these allegations and accusations as unfounded and ungrounded. The search
engine giant's response is that it is the Internet which has posed the threat
to the traditional model of newspaper business. Google is not harming the
industry, but helping to increase traffic to newspapers' websites. Google News
shows only the headlines, a line or two of text and links to the story's Web
site, which is fair in copyright laws. In addition, there are indications of a
shift in the way people get their news. The average daily circulation of US
newspapers declined 7% in the last and first quarters of 2008 and 2009
respectively, according to the latest data from the Audit Bureau of
Circulations. The data indicate that a shift in consumer behaviour has led more
people to get their news and information online (New York Times, April 2009).
In addition to
the so-called stealing of contents in the US, for example, advertising dollars
were not forth coming due to the squeeze by the economic slowdown. Newspapers
have also lost much of their classified advertisement to the Internet. To make
things worse, a depressed economy has compelled more readers to cancel their
newspaper subscriptions, and businesses to cut their advertisement budget as
part of overall cost-cutting measures. As a result, closures of newspapers,
bankruptcy, job cuts and salary cuts are widespread (Mahmud, 2009). Newspapers
in the US cited huge losses. The Christian Science Monitor, for example, has
lost about $18.9 million per year forcing it to stop printing daily and,
instead, printing only weekly editions. The Rocky Mountain News in Denver
published its last print edition on April 3, 2009 after 149 years of
publication as it was losing $1.5 million a month (buddingmanager.com, 2009).
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that newspapers cut
nearly 50,000 jobs—roughly 15 percent of the industry's work force—between June
2008 and June 2009 (The Star Online, September 2009). Despite the bad times,
however, there are some successful stories involving newspapers which have been
able to weather the storm and remain resilient through their online digital
newspapers. Some of the more successful newspaper responses include companies
like The New York Times, Knight Ridder, and the Washington Post. The New York
Times has been a real leader on consumer demographic marketing. With 16 million
registered users, nytimes.com is one of the only media sources that can let you
customize an advertising message with specific demographic cuts (e.g. male
users over fifty reading the sports section). They collect only five categories
of consumer demographic data: age, sex, income, geography and e-mail. And yet
they have been able to garner 70 % premiums for their demographically targeted
advertising (Gilbert, 2009).
Knight Ridder,
on the other hand, has been successful in building two very strong national
networks. realcities.com links city guides from over forty
different markets with a very powerful user interface. Its national job board,
CareerBuilder.com, is one of the leading national job sites, and recently it
has acquired headhunter.net. The Washington Post has managed to
remain a national player in political news, while owning the local market down
to the level of PTA information and high school sports.
Observers argue
that these sites are successful because they are separated from the core
newspaper business and all have been successful in building new markets with
new sources of revenue (Gilbert, 2002). In addition to that, a large number of
citizens in the US have their own internet connection so they can read
newspapers online. The US has the second largest Internet user population in
the world with 227.7 million users trailing only behind China. In terms of the
percentage of population or penetration of internet users, the US has 74.1%
(Internet World Stats, 2009).
Newspapers in
Malaysia, however, have a different experience from their US counterparts.
Readership has yet to drop to a drastic level, while advertisers still regard
it as the medium of choice. The Internet might have become a force to be
reckoned with in the political arena, but the reality is that most Malaysians
still get their news from conventional media like newspapers and TV. This does
not mean, however, that newspapers in Malaysia can sit back and do nothing
while expecting their readership to be maintained or increase (Yap, 2009).
Though in
Malaysia the situation is still manageable, presently there are lots of efforts
by the owners of conventional media, especially newspapers to counteract the
challenge being posed by the Internet and Information and Communications
Technology in order to remain in operation. This would mean that they have to
have online presence by having electronic copy of their print newspaper. In
Malaysia, like the US, people go online where they get to read newspapers for
free. For example, one can go to Malaysian newspapers online (http://www.onlinenewspapers.com/malaysia.htm)
and read almost all the Malaysian newspapers. This has drawn away some of the
readers who used to buy print newspapers. Despite all these developments,
newspapers both in the US and Malaysia will not cease to operate. In the West
itself, when television was introduced, there was an outcry that radio will die
off. But until today radio still exists, continues to improve and is growing on
a massive scale.
As Barthelemy et al. (2011) found, while there are clearly
significant shifts taking place within the print industry, particularly around
attempts to monetize online content and find alternative sources of revenue to
replace falling advertising revenues from print, the decline of the industry is
overstated. News organizations are going through a process of change and
adaptation. In addition, findings show that the narrative of newspapers being
in continuous decline is mostly Western centric, and does not take into account
regional variations and the fact that in many emerging countries, print
newspaper sales are robust and growing. In Malaysia, though there is a drop in
readership and a subsequent drop in the circulation of newspapers, there are
still some newspapers like The Sun which have grown dramatically. At one point,
The Sun had only circulation of 100,000, but it is now distributing 300,000
daily using the free paper concept for both print and online versions, while
growing their advertising dollars as well.
Some observers
see the arrival of New Communication Technology known as the internet is
bringing with it a set of opportunities and challenges for traditional or print
media professions such as journalism (Garrison, 1996). Journalists, especially
when writing for magazines, can gather news via the Internet and do their
fact-checking or inquiries into facts and figures or background historical
information directly from their homes or offices.
THE PRINT MEDIA
ARE DOOMED
(A Survey of
Mass Media Audience and practitional Point of View)
Surpassed in
convenience and economy by online content, printed magazines and newspapers
will dry up in the next decade. What are the Pros or cons? This is
audience perspection on the case or future of the newspaper publishing in
the light of the fast growing reliable of the internet. Audiences’
opinion on the effect of internet to newspaper publication. The content is base
on a debate platform on BusinessWeek.com, or The McGraw-Hill Companies.
PRO:
Disappearing
Whether or not
print dies, its business model will. Physical wares—newspapers, books,
magazines, discs—will no longer be the primary or most profitable means of
delivering and interacting with media: news, fact, entertainment, or education.
It’s not that
print is bad. It’s that digital is better. It has too many advantages (and
there’ll only be more): ubiquity, speed, permanence, searchability, the ability
to update, the ability to remix, targeting, interaction, marketing via links,
data feedback. Digital transcends the limitations of—and incorporates the best
of—individual media.
More important
than any of that, of course, is that digital reduces the incremental cost of
production and distribution of content to zero. And as every newspaper can tell
you post-Craigslist: It’s impossible to compete with free.
The keys to
making the transition: Advertisers will realize that their customers are
digital and that marketing online, in a post-scarcity economy, must be cheaper
and exponentially more efficient and effective. Technology and connectivity
will advance, making content an everywhere experience. And print addicts will
(sorry to be so blunt) die.
Note that in
2008, online revenue at the Los Angeles Times surpassed the cost of its
(reduced) newsroom, making it possible to produce the "paper" as a
sustainable digital enterprise without the expense of creating and distributing a
physical product. There is the beginning of the end of print.
CON: The Power
of Print
Given that I
run an online-only news site here in Silicon Valley, you’d think I’d be arguing
that print is already dead. But the technology business teaches you that
nothing ever goes away completely. Mainframes, Fortran, and paper all survive,
despite PCs, Java, and the paperless office. What’s really changing is the role
of content itself.
Online, it’s
participation that becomes the product, with the content merely an ingredient
of the real product. And print becomes a great vehicle to promote that new, experiential
online product.
Print is
physical, and has potency you’d be foolish not to acknowledge: pictures that
live outside a screen, copy you can carry with you and leave behind. Glossy
magazines with pretty pictures of things you want and the alternative weekly
that’s sitting next to the subway or lunch spot will be fine. The Sunday New
York Times (NYT) will still be delivered.
Now, it’s also
clear that there’s going to be less print, and the old pecking order of online
being the handmaiden to print will be reversed. But you’ll be able to get your
newspaper. On Sunday. Mostly. It’s just good business.
REASONS WHY THE
PRINT NEWSPAPERS WILL STILL SURVIVE- JESSICA TYNER
"Newspapers
are doing the reporting in this country," observed John S. Carroll, former
editor of The Los Angeles Times for five years." Google and Yahoo aren't
those people putting reporters on the street in any number. Blogs cannot afford
it."
Jessica Tyner on May 28, 2013 said in one of her article that, if you’re
“seasoned” enough, you may remember how television was going to be the death of
books and reading. More recently, e-books were supposed to make print books go
away. Television was supposed to kill the radio star, and home video was
supposed to off movie theaters…and yet we still have all these media formats. Despite more
viewing options than ever, a night at the movies is still a
popular pastime.
The death of
print newspapers has been predicted for awhile now, and there’s no question
that the industry has suffered tremendously under a mobile digital
transformation that occurred at roughly the same time as the worst economic
recession since the 1930s. But print papers aren’t dead yet, and investor /
oracle Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway has acquired 28 dailies in the past
two years. Buffett isn’t exactly known for investing based on sentimentality.
Here are 5 reasons why print newspapers will survive.
1. They’re Still
Great for Local Community News
Many smaller
community newspapers are printed once or twice a week, and they’re still
unbeatable for capturing the spirit of a community. From local business
openings to Little League scores, community papers give local readers exactly
what they want: Information on what’s going on in their immediate surroundings,
which is information that’s not as easy to come by on the internet. It may be
2013, but if you want to find out whose heifer won the blue ribbon at the county
fair, the local print newspaper is still your go-to source in many areas.
2. They’re
Embracing More Platforms
Print
newspapers are embracing the web and mobile devices. While papers may still put
out print editions, their focus has shifted from getting 18 column inches on a
new local ordinance to creating content that is then packaged for multiple
platforms. Rather than thinking of themselves as being in the print industry,
as they were a decade ago, they now consider themselves as part of the overall media
industry. Some of the changes in recent years have been painful, but necessary,
and papers are adapting.
3. They Are
Mining Online Demographic Data to their Advantage
Advertisers use
the internet to understand their customers better. Newspapers are starting to
see the value in mining demographic data, too. As customers interact with their
product on newspaper websites and social media, newspapers can keep a finger on
the pulse of their readers’ lives and learn what’s important to them. This
allows newspapers to package content for the way readers consume it. Extensive
knowledge of their reader demographics also allows newspapers to make their
case to advertisers, which still are an important revenue stream for papers.
Big data will be used by more industries, including news media, to better
target content.
4. The Industry
Is Gradually Figuring Out Paywalls
Paywalls are
still new, and have involved a fair amount of trial and error. However, the
industry is in the process of working out the kinks and implementing paywalls
that are increasingly accepted by consumers. Many other nuances of successful
paywall implementation are yet to be worked out, but newspapers are starting to
see signs of successful implementation and are learning from their own past paywall
mistakes and the mistakes of others.
5. Print Will
Be Seen As a Valued Extra
Industry
analysts like Outsell Inc. analyst Ken Doctor see print becoming more of a
valued extra than the underlying platform it has been for generations: “By
2020, we’ll be used to a few days a week of print, or maybe just ‘the Sunday
paper,’ and wonder why we chopped down whole forests; didn’t we always have
these tablets?” Sentimental attachment to special print editions, like those
following historical events or presidential elections, will probably take years
to die out completely.
Digital news
delivery is rapidly becoming the standard, but that doesn’t mean that print is
dead. Other platforms that were supposed to be obliterated by technological
progress, like radio, cinema, and printed books, are still around and still
popular. Print journalism is definitely changing, but it is likely to continue
to have an important place in the American experience for a long time to come.
Digital
publishers may still offer print products, though their bread-and-butter
content is delivered online. Developing revenue streams, particularly after a
transition from print to web, is a big undertaking and necessary for survival
and success. Real Match offers recruitment advertising solutions for media
companies and digital publishers as a promising revenue stream for online media
exploring revenue development, and invites you to check out these exciting
monetization methods.
Far more controversial is the quest to get readers to pay
for online content. In fact, there is no good reason that online content should
be free, other than “people are used to it.” Is it impossible to persuade
people to pay for something they are used to getting for free? Not at all.
Online music downloads are a good example; so is television. While TV had been
free since its inception, large numbers of people proved willing to pay for
cable and digital television.
A subscriber-only model for individual websites has
repeatedly proven unworkable. (The Wall Street Journal - a notable exception -
gets people to pay for financial information while providing most editorial
content free of charge.) The main reason it cannot work is that people who read
news and commentary on the Internet usually get their content from many different
sites.
That is the great advantage of the Internet: you can go
from The Washington Post to the London Times at the click of a mouse, and
follow a link within one story to read another. If every news site started
hiding its content behind a pay wall, reader would face either huge bills or
greatly restricted choices, and many would seek to circumvent the subscription
requirements.
Walter Isaacson, former managing editor of Time, recently
got into the fray with a proposal to make web media content available for
micropayments similar to iTunes, “a one-click system with a really simple
interface.” If you see a link to an interesting article on, say, The San Jose
Mercury News website, you don’t have to buy a $20 subscription to the
publication - you can pay a nickel or a dime to read the individual item. While
this is a promising idea, it has substantial drawbacks. Those nickels and dimes
can add up, and if your monthly bill is high enough, you may think twice the
next time you feel like clicking on a link.
A better approach may be to make news and analysis
content available only through media portals or carriers, similar to cable
television providers. A subscription to a carrier would give access to any news
site (newspaper, magazine, blog) that is a part of its package. The
subscription price could vary depending on level of consumption: say, $20 a
month for 40 hours of media access, $40 for 100 hours, and so on. Or the cost
of a subscription could vary depending on which publications are included,
while content outside the customer’s standard package could be available for
one-time micropayments.
Different media portals could experiment with different
fee scales. This would allow people to surf the Web without having to ponder
each click of a link. Revenues could be distributed to individual websites
depending on their readership. This strategy would still require a drastic
departure from Internet business as usual. The migration of participating sites
behind media-portal walls would have to be coordinated. Some policing would be
needed to ensure that premium content is not reposted on free-access sites.
This could make the carriers look like bad guys, at least in the eyes of those
for whom free online content has become an entitlement if not an article of
faith. Yet, if there is a will to adopt the media-portal subscription model,
there will be a way. Even in the age of celebrity gossip sites and reality
shows, millions of Americans will still respect real journalism enough to be
willing to pay to help keep it alive.
OUTLOOK FOR THE FUTURE OF NEWSPAPER AND THE ENTIRE PRINT MEDIA
Depending on
location and circumstances, each specific newspaper will face varied threats
and changes. In some cases, new owners have increased their print, not trying
to rely a lot more on digital services. However, in most cases, there is an
attempt to find new revenue sources online that are less based on print sales.
How much further ad sales will decline cannot be predicted with accuracy. The
future will partly be shaped by the need for vision, leadership, and community
support of local news and journalism. The future will be shaped by what
citizens and consumers choose. The decline of well paid journalism and reliable
news sources could level off if enough citizens choose to support it.
Newspapers have
a very important role to play, by holding governments to account, trying to
stop corruption, and being an important contribution to democratic free speech.
The future is not inevitable or predetermined. Ultimately, the newspaper of the
future may bear little resemblance to the newsprint edition familiar to older
readers. It may become a hybrid, part-print and part-internet, or perhaps
eventually, as has happened with several newspapers, including the Seattle
Post-Intelligencer, the Christian Science Monitor and the Ann Arbor News,
internet only.
In the
meantime, the transition from the printed page to whatever comes next will
likely be fraught with challenges, both for the newspaper industry and for its
consumers. "My expectation," wrote executive editor Bill Keller of
The New York Times in January 2009, "is that for the foreseeable future
our business will continue to be a mix of print and online journalism, with the
growth online offsetting the (gradual, we hope) decline of print." The paper
in newspaper may go away, insist industry stalwarts, but the news will remain.
"Paper is dying," said Nick Bilton, a technologist for The Times,
"but it's just a device. Replacing it with pixels is a better
experience." On September 8, 2010, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., Chairman and
Publisher of The New York Times, told an International Newsroom Summit in
London that "We will stop printing the New York Times sometime in the
future, date TBD."
Mitchell
Stephens calls for a turn toward "wisdom journalism" that will take a
more evaluative, investigative, informed, and possibly even opinionated stance.
But even as pixels replace print, and as newspapers undergo wrenching surgery,
necessitating deep cutbacks, reallocation of remaining reporters, and the
slashing of decades-old overhead, some observers remain optimistic. What
emerges may be 'newspapers' unrecognizable to older readers, but which may be
more timely, more topical and more flexible. Less competition from other local
printers will also be a major determining factor. "Journalistic outlets
will discover," wrote by Michael Hirschorn in The Atlantic, "that the
Web allows (okay, forces) them to concentrate on developing expertise in a
narrower set of issues and interests, while helping journalists from other places
and publications find new audiences." The 'newspaper' of the future, say
Hirschorn and others, may resemble The Huffington Post more than anything flung
at today's stoops and driveways.
Much of that
experimentation may happen in the world's fastest- growing newspaper markets.
"The number of newspapers and their circulation has declined the world
over except in India and China," according to former CEO Olivier Fleurot
of The Financial Times. "The world is becoming more digital but technology
has helped newspapers as much as the Internet." Making those technological
changes work for them, instead of against them, will decide whether newspapers
remain vital – or roadkill on the information superhighway. There will be a
percentage of readers that refuse to use the internet and electronic screens,
preferring hard copies. What this percentage will be, in various places and
times, remains to be seen. Some readers have too much screen time already, and
enjoy going back to paper and ink at times.
Some adverts
attempts online are blocked, unlike a paper ad. The value of print advertising
is that a significant percentage of the population will see the same ad, unlike
specialized internet adverts.
CONCLUSION
Despite the
fact that people still hope that the newspaper publishing can stand the
competition posed to it by the electronic media, yet, the fate of newspaper
publishing in the future is uncertain. The reason is that has tend to turn
people to some how lazy and dependent, at such, people tends to look for suffiscated
items which will ease their lives.
It is clear
that the newspaper publishing cannot satisfy the yearn and hunger for
information that the contemporary society have, which only the internet can.
The yearn and hunger include that of breaking news, accessibility, availability
and cost compare to that of newspaper which cannot report breaking news because
it is periodical in production. In newspaper publishing,the accessibility and
availability will only be possible if the publication reach the location of the
audience or they will audience will be ignorant of what happens around them.
Thereby making the distribution not to have equal distribution. The cost of
buying the publication can also affect the attitude of the readers in reading the
papers while the internat have giving the people or readers cheaper means of
sourcing the information. In Nigeria, a suscriber can use his or her phone with
Mega Bite bonus giving to them by the network to browse the news or use his
airtime and browse the Newspaper website and will be satisfied with the
process.
The advent of
new media may have posed a challenge to print media which their effect, for
example, is felt on the circulation of print newspapers, especially in the USA,
however, in Nigeria, the effect of the new media on the print media is still
manageable. Nigerian newspapers still attract advertising dollars even with the
presence of online newspapers. It is a believe that the layout of newspapers
here may change, but the content is still in the form of news. The two
reinforce each other. Thus, in this paper, the arguement that the presence of
the Internet will replace newspaper publishing will not completely take over
the position of the newspaper thereby making it to go to extinct, just as radio
did not replace newspapers and television .
Even though the
print media have their own online versions, they have not fully embraced the
new technology. Even if there is a drop in circulation, it would be because the
younger generation prefer the internet as it is more interactive compared
to the print especially the newspaper. There are also television stations which
have an online presence such as CNN, NBS, NTA etc. A large number of Nigeria
citizens have their own Internet connections, so they can read newspapers
online, thus squeezing revenues from advertising especially at a time of global
economic slowdown. In Nigeria, however, the internet and print media will
continue to coexist and reinforce each other.
REFERENCE
- Ali Salman et al: The Impact of New
Media on Traditional
Mainstream Mass Media School
of Media and Communication Studies Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities
Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia 43600. Bangi Selangor Malaysia
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http://study.com/academy/lesson/development-of-the-mass-media-journalism-in-the-united-states-history-timeline.html http://www.businessweek.com/debateroom/archives/2008/12/the_print_media_are_doomed.html
-
Laurie Thomas Lee: History And
Development Of Mass Media, Department of Broadcasting, University of Nebraske
Lincoln, USA.
-
OLLEY, Oritsesan Wilfred
(Corresponding author) Doctoral Candidate, Department of Communication Arts,
University of Uyo, Uyo et al- NigeriaReaders’ Perception of Nigerian
Newspapers on the Internet
- Rabi M.S. (2013): News World, Career Prospect In Journalism and Mass
Communication. Ibadan: Stirling Hoaden Publishers Ltd.
- Rabiu M.S (2014). Journalistic Skills: For Professional Excellence. Ibadan:
Stirling Horden Publishers Ltd.
