Whoever thought that the old media is out and the new media is in? Have newspapers started closing shop? Well, most of them have reinvented themselves and gone online but they haven’t stopped publishing their regular paper version. According to a survey (results below) the old media is still kicking up a storm. There has been some minor decline in usage over a couple of years but it’s still not significant enough for us to go and put an insert for them in the obituaries section of an online newspaper.
The survey results are quite evident and I won’t dwell on the individual numbers. I’d rather make some pointers which may or may not be agreeable to all and in the process invite some discussions from readers of this post.
Will the internet completely replace all other forms of media in the near future? Probably not! I see the internet only supplementing the other forms of media I might enjoy spending time in the morning with the print version of a popular national newspaper, but for news updates during the day, I would invariably turn either to a television or the online news websites for any further developments.
They say that for changes to be significant there have to be disruptive forces at work. The only way I can see the new media completely replacing the old is when both of the following happen:
We run out of trees for manufacturing paper and recycled paper cannot be recycled anymore.
Governments ban the use of television to save electricity and in the process go-green nationwide. They can promote usage of energy-efficient laptops in every household along with a high-speed broadband connection.
Television stations will start broadcasting over the net. Newspapers will offer online viewing of a print version (that was never printed) along with the latest updates. We reduce our carbon footprint and will be more socially networked than we ever were before.
Any guesses if it will ever come to this?
