HAS THE COMING OF THE INTERNET HAS DISPLACED THE NEED FOR NEWSPAPER PUBLISHING?

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.

A broadcasting organisation may broadcast several programs at the same time, through several channels (frequencies), for example BBC One and Two. On the other hand, two or more organisations may share a channel and each use it during a fixed part of the day. Digital radio and digital television may also transmit multiplexed programming, with several channels compressed into one ensemble.

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

BY JEFF JARVIS, buzzmachine.com

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

Chrıs Tolles, Topıx

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

1.   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
2.   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
3.   Laurie Thomas Lee: History And Development Of Mass Media, Department of Broadcasting, University of Nebraske Lincoln, USA.
4.   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
5.  Rabi M.S. (2013): News World, Career Prospect In Journalism and Mass Communication. Ibadan: Stirling Hoaden Publishers Ltd.
6. Rabiu M.S (2014). Journalistic Skills: For Professional Excellence. Ibadan: Stirling Horden Publishers Ltd.