The Death of Print Media

The rising consumption of newspapers and news online.

Print is slowly but surely declining while online media sites, blogs and even social media thrive with producing the latest news right to your fingertips.

As people in the digital age, we want our information fast, convenient and if possible free, as student Jasmin Macey states “undoubtedly I find it [the internet] is a more convenient platform for people nowadays to access stories.” The rise of the internet has then had a great impact on the way we gather our information and the way journalism works with print outlets now taking all kinds of measures to save money such as cutting jobs, slimming down the number of pages or becoming less frequent, for example New York Magazines decision to become a bi-weekly magazine “due in part to how the Internet has changed the way readers consume content.”

Image Source: Newspaper Association of America

Amy Starling, who is interested in both online and print journalism, is however optimistic about the future of print journalism. Print media can still be a relevant force as it is “the original and the best way to disseminate information … the online world is super ephemeral: you can be reading an update on the Ukrainian crisis one minute and looking down Miley Cyrus’s open gob the next. Print media has a sense of permanence and quality,” she states. With the use of editorial staff and qualified journalists print media is often an outlet for more articulate and crafted journalism stories than what we might find online.

While, as all of my interview subjects addressed, jobs are being lost through this decline in print media, many more jobs and opportunities are being opened up. Student Jasmin Macey is enthused about the prospects of online journalism as “the publication of stories online can encourage active audience participation as readers can promptly provide feedback on a piece and share it with friends or colleagues on social media or email if they desire.”

The rise of online journalism allows for this audience participation and in turn allows for citizen journalism. Anybody in todays digital age can start a blog, write a story or submit to the opinions section of online publications. It brings into question the reliability of the source and also the relevance of qualified journalists. Student Zoe Simmons is not too concerned with citizen journalism taking over journalism jobs, she states that “we as trained journalists have actual skills and can then aggregate and curate their stories, essentially writing them better” than your average citizen.

While there are many concerns around this online citizen journalism to do with it’s creditability and also its effect on the industry, online outlets can be beneficial in ways print can not. They can allow for an opinion that is not controlled by a large media company as student Dean Blake tells us “citizens don’t care about PR spin, or about whether what they say will hurt a brand, so if they see something happen they will tell it like it is.”

Print media will not die out for a while yet, but there is no denial that there has been a rise in online journalism and that this new form of journalism has bought about some struggles but also some innovative forms of journalism. The future of journalism, is however, continuously up in the air.

“Its a slow burn, but one day they [newspapers] will be obsolete” says Dean Blake.