OH! THE INTERNET IS KILLING THE NEWSPAPER - Musa Namady Junior

OH! THE INTERNET IS KILLING THE NEWSPAPER - Musa Namady Junior

INTRODUCTION

          With the spectacular advances of the digital technology, shaking the world, the general impression is that the three century reign of newspaper is on the decline. The decline has been widely debated as the newspaper industry has faced down soaring newsprint prices, slumping of ads sales, and loss of much classified advertising and precipitous drops in circulations.

          In recent years, the number of newspaper slated for closure, bankruptcy or severe cutbacks has risen. There is risen use of personal computers, mobile phones and tablets by individuals at home and in offices to access the news of the day with ease and of lower cost, through the internet without necessarily going out to a newspaper vendor to buy a copy.

          This paper is however, of the opinion that the coming of the internal has displaced the publishing of newspapers.

DEFINITION OF TERMS

NEWSPAPER:

According to Tebbel (1979), newspapers are simply organizations who devised together the news of what is happening in the community, state, nation and the world.

          Kundra (2005) also defines a newspaper as a paper that is printed and distributed daily, weekly, or at some other regular and usually short interval and which contains elements of news, articles, features, editorials, advertising and other matter regarded to be of current interest. He adds that the newspapers’ role is to find out fresh information on matters of public interest and relay them as quickly and as accurately as possible to readers in an honest and balanced way.

INTERNET:

According to Elanson (2005) cited in Rabiu (2013), “the internet is a diverse set of independent networks, interlinked to provide its users with the appearance of a single, uniform network.”

The internet is the world wide, publicly accessible network of interconnected computer network that transmits data by package switching using the standard Internet Protocol (IP). It is a network of networks that consist of millions of smaller domestic, academic, government, and business networks, which together carry various information and services such as electronic mail, file transfer, and the interlinked web pages.

Having defined the two terms, it is important to briefly see their historical development.

BRIEF HISTORY OF THE NEWSPAPER

According to Rodman (2006), the first newspaper appeared in China, printed on woodcuts, more than 1200 years ago.

However, printing press begins in England in 1477 by the legendary printer, William Coxton. However, his efforts would not have been successful if by 1440s, Johann Gutenberg of the German City of Mainz Gad not Guented a printing machine.

Gutenberg is also credited with the introduction of oil-based ink which was more durable than the water based ink, used mostly by Romans and Egyptians. Having worked as a professional goldsmith, Gutenberg made skillful use of the knowledge of the metals he has learned as a craftsman.

This invention greatly accelerated the growth of a printing as a means of communication, as before then, in what is referred to as the middle ages, the Egyptians were using symbols to communicate, while the Romans were using wall Painting. The Greeks and Africans were using the town crier.

BRIEF HISTORY OF THE INTERNET

It all started in 1960. Scientists of the University of California, Los Angeles were ready for a critical experiment. They had a computer and communication node, while colleague installed similar equipment op to the coast in Mendo Park. They planned to test whether they could link the two computers over a telephone lines to operate as one system. The researchers began to tap in the message: log in to make the link. The system crashed. That was the beginning of the internet revolution.

As noted by Hanson (2005), the in internet is the recent of the mass media. It is still rapidly evolving and changing, developing newer and better features every day. As explained by Hanson (2005), the internet was largely limited to interpersonal communication until 1991, within when Tim Berners-Lee release the World Wide Web as easy and uniform way to access materials on the internet. Since then, the internet has become a medium unlike any other because it is the only medium that incorporates elements of interpersonal, group and mass communication. That is how the internet started existing and since from that time, the internet has been developing and the numbers users keeps increasing globally. A study shows that more than 50 million of Americans log o to the internet to check for news. The study further shows that only a mere 17% said they get their regular news from printed newspaper.

The internet has nowadays became a powerful media tool to such extent that media experts acknowledge that things are changing, they warned about digging an early grave for the print media (newspaper), saying that this power shift should be treated with caution.

However, both the internet and the newspaper share certain similarities. This similarities would include:

1.     Top news in both the newspaper and the internet are always highlighted and be easily sported.

2.     Both the internet and the newspaper news displays a lot of commercials.

3.     Both news have their news under a genre. This means, online news would have links for each genre and there would be different newspaper too for each genre.

4.     Similar news are usually put on both online news and the newspaper.

5.     Both the online news and newspaper always include the weather forecast, editorials, letters etc.

Those are some of the similarities that the newspapers share with the internet. Some of the differences as newspaper will include:

1.     Online news is updated immediately where as newspapers will be a day late.

2.     Online news is more interactive with audio, video, visual effects and being able to comment unlike newspaper that you can only look at pictures.

3.     Newspapers would have less errors, as they are highly read through and edited whereas online news may be too rushed.

4.     On online news, you can go directly to the news you want you want by typing a key word while in a newspaper, readers have to read briefly through the pages.

5.     Newspaper would contain a specific number of news you want as it has limited space while an online journalism has no any limitation on the available space.

In the course of our discussion however, we have been making use of the word “Online Journalism” which is indeed a complex term. It will therefore be good to know what online journalism is.

What is Online Journalism?

Ganiyu and Akinretti (2011) describes online journalism as the media share of digital revolution. It combines this with the journalistic skills of repoting, editing and news productions, features and programmes.

According to Seema Hasan, to get online means to connect to the internet and to connect to the internet according to her, you need a computer, which she says varies in different sizes and purpose and an internet service provider which she says is the software you require to get online.

The concept of online journalism has continually been a great threat to the existence of the print media due to its numerous advantages, forcing some newsprint job to be phase out. A report from Agence France Press (AFP) indicates that 17,809 media jobs were eliminated in the U.S in 2006 alone an increase of 88% compared to 2005 when 9453 were announced (Seema Hasan 2013).

It is a worldwide phenomenon that online media has taken the print media in almost all countries of the world. Online media has taken edge over print in various fields including news and information. Online has beaten print medium even in the consumer market.

In Nigeria for instance, the emergence of the internet has grossly affect newspaper printing in the sense that, because newspapers are not easily accessible in several communities, many Nigerians living in areas that are not close to newspaper vendors access the content of the papers online.

There are also the creations of online newspapers with its network of reporters across the country, who reported any event as it is breaking objectively, clearly, completely and concisely. This online newspaper will include News24, Naij.com, Newsnow, etc.

Advantages of the Internet and How the Internet Has Displaced the Need for Newspaper Publishing

Interactivity: When comparing the newspaper and the internet news, interactivity is the clear differential factor.  Interaction allows the reader to participate contributes to discussion boards, sends an e-mail to the editor, commenting on a particular news story etc. Today, news organizations are observing the critical role interactivity play in online journalism. The objective is no longer text, but providing the reader with hypertext, story links, multimedia links, images navigation menu, and a space for comments after every story.

Variety/ unique source: Online journalism allows readers to obtain news from unique source other than their local newspaper which can fabricate stories. This gives the readers distinctive perspective on current events.

Immediacy: The web newspapers are constantly being updated giving readers breaking news as it happens. The concept of immediacy has forced many Nigeria newspapers to start an online copies in order to be updating readers on what is breaking. Virtually, all Nigerian newspapers have a website and a facebook, twitter, instagram accounts which they use in pasting, sharing and updating news stories. Example is The Nation newspaper with it website as www.thenationtiononline,ng. Readers can have access to the whole publication through the address.

Live streaming With the help of the internet, readers everywhere stream a video link and watch how an event has taken place - thanks to youtube. Nigerians in the far Maiduguri can use their interconnected mobile phones to stream live the presidential inauguration of Muhammadu Buhari as president. Football lovers who might not be opportuned to watch the UEFA but can come back later and stream the match online and watch the same match.