Print Journalism

Print Journalism Cynics say that it will not be long before print journalism which refers to the profession of reporting or editing news stories for newspapers and news magazines in the world including India will be replaced by online and mobile phone journalism. There are already 6,800,000,000 mobile phone subscribers in the world with a total population of 7,012,000,000. Roughly the world over, mobile penetration comes to about 97 per 100 and the number is growing by the day. China tops the mobile phone subscribers at 1,276,660,000 with a population of 1,369,811,000 followed by India with a subscriber base of 970,955,980 for a population of 1,267,402,000. The United States of America ranks third with subscriber base of 327,577,629 for a population of 71, 77,828 which accounts for 103 per cent penetration. The technology is available at the finger tip of the common man; hence there is easy access to all types of news, anytime and anywhere. This is the biggest challenge faced by print journalism. In the United States and Europe, people particularly youth has lost interest in reading newspapers. Newsrooms in the country blame it on the inability to have accepted the changes that were required of them. In India, the situation is not very different. Modern technology is replacing the traditional methods of delivering and reading news. Another cause of concern particularly in developing countries is that post globalisation and with the rise of consumerism, several newspapers are being looked upon like any other commercial product. The press like any other institution is exposed to forces released by the market economy and cultural of utilitarian values. Readers are being looked upon as consumer and not as members of the society to be communicated with. Popularity of Social Media There is little doubt that social media is an ever-present force in most of our daily lives and it is used for almost anything from consuming the news to interacting with friends. Journalism, as whole, is a form of media which probably everyone sees in either a positive or negative light. Regardless of how you may view the media, journalism is the news and it is current. This is partly the reason why there is a big push being made to move all forms of journalism towards online platforms. For the most part, on social networking sites such as Twitter and Face Book people are finding and reading the news quickly as it is right at their fingertips. Another added benefit of online journalism is that it reaches a wider audience. The youth story The youth of today has turned to the internet. A growing news presence on major social networking sites can change that with more people actively engaging and participating in the news. Online media provides the opportunity to share, discuss, and debate right at the moment that a certain news event is occurring. There may be some that are against online journalism, though most of these people actually read a real newspaper and may not be as actively engaged on social media sites. While print journalism may have been vastly popular years ago and still may be with some people, it has little chance of survival in a society that is becoming more and more digital. Digitisation is putting pressure on print to change. For decades, newspapers were built on a model where readers would come and engage with the stories to reach the advertised product or message. Digitisation has disrupted that model. Now advertisers do not need to use doors to reach their target as they can reach out to them directly. The online revolution is very young but in the next decade will be more viable and newer models will evolve. And the decline begins The decline began with the advent of Radio and TV and accelerated with the coming up of online journalism with the advent of radio and later TV, newspaper circulation began a gradual but steady decline. In the current times, the audiences do not have to solely rely on newspapers as their source of news anymore. That is especially true in case of breaking news, which could be conveyed much more quickly via broadcast media, television journalism or online media. And as television newscasts became more sophisticated, TV became the dominant mass medium. This trend accelerated with the rise of 24-hour cable news networks. Newspapers begin to disappear Afternoon newspapers were the first casualties. People coming home from work increasingly turned on the TV instead of opening a newspaper, and afternoon papers saw their circulations plunge and profits dry up. TV also captured more and more of the advertisement revenue that newspapers had relied on. Emergence of the Internet But if TV represented a body blow to the newspaper industry, the World Wide Web may prove to be the nail in the coffin. With the emergence of the internet in the 1990s, vast amounts of information were suddenly free for the taking. Most newspapers, not wanting to be left behind the times, started websites in which they essentially gave away their most valuable commodity – their content - for free. This model continues to be the predominant one in use today. Post recession scenario The recent economic hard times have only accelerated the problem. Revenue from print advertisement has plunged. With profits plunging, newspaper publishers have responded with layoffs and cutbacks. Print journalism needs to change Indeed, that’s the conundrum facing newspapers and their readers. All agree that newspapers still represent an unrivalled source of in-depth news, analysis and opinion, and that if papers disappear entirely, there will be nothing to take their place. To keep in pace with the technological advances, it is high time that print journalism in the country accepts the change. In a country like India which has 60 per cent of the population under 35, it is mandatory that journalism caters to the needs of a young population.