English, asked by harjaskaur070, 10 months ago

Question: Write the debate on Print Media vs Electronic Media . Write either in favour or against.
Please answer the question as soon as possible and answer correctly​

Answers

Answered by gisellefarrow
1

My opening position is that I don’t necessarily see the future of newspapers as one or the other. We will carry on buying newspapers, that’s for sure, and if the paywall turns out to be the most viable way of making them financially sound then of course that will be a major part of the mix. But if over the next five years publishers can find another way to make newspapers pay for themselves as a vehicle to carry advertising, then we’ll probably be working with that way of doing things instead.What I find absurd is the extreme point of view that there will only be online newspapers rather than a variety of options. I have a hard copy of the Times in front of me, and I have searched it from front to back and I can’t find a USB port on it anywhere. And another frustrating thing is that if there is a development in one of the stories then it doesn’t update itself automatically.

These things would be nice. But on the other hand, I was reading my iPad earlier on the train and because I hadn’t charged it the battery ran out. And yet this copy of the Times: I’ve been staring at it for some time now and its battery hasn’t run out. And I’m convinced that I’ll still be able to read it in a fortnight should I choose to.

One of the things that drives technological changes such as the proposition that newspapers will go online is not so much our ability to enforce that change as technologists, but our desire as consumers to see it happen. As a journalist and author I’m neutral on whether my readers read my stuff on a digital machine such as a Kindle or an iPad, online or pre-downloaded, or whether they want to read it on paper. But there are people who want the choice and there is a generation that doesn’t want to adopt the digital newspaper. There are people for whom, because of the upfront cost of the tablet technology, the idea of the digital newspaper will never be right.

Boris Johnson isn’t the first person to bring this issue to the fore. As far back ago as 1990 I was writing for a publication called Microscope about how our media would be delivered at the turn of the century. Even then we were saying that by the year 2000 we’d all be reading our newspapers on screen. And so if you’re talking about a five-year timeline, I really can’t see the hard copy newspaper disappearing.

It’s not really a question of the so-called authority of paper over online journalism. I’d seriously question the skills of any journalist who felt there was a difference in the importance of the quality of material they file based on the medium in which it is published. But there are news blogs out there that repeat allegations about former Conservative peers which they haven’t bothered to substantiate, because they didn’t think it mattered as it had already appeared online. When it comes to quality assurance issues like this, I don’t think it matters what medium you are talking about.

Only technology writers like myself really care if the news will be online streaming, pre-downloaded, or any other mode of delivery. And just as I can’t see consumers on the Underground screaming that limitations of the subterranean Wi-Fi are ruining their news experience, neither can I see them abandoning their paper newspapers, especially as most of them are free. And when you consider that most people now leave their copy of the Metro or the Evening Standard for the next person, I see a new social tradition developing around the handing along of the news that can’t really happen if we’re getting it through apps.

So you can debate the state of the technology and the quality of the content while lamenting that the problem with the future is that it never arrives on time. But the real issue is what the consumer wants. In the past, despite the leading-edge technology available, the public rejected laser disc, minidisc and digital audio tape. Just didn’t want it, and I think that is what will happen with this question. We’ve had newspapers a long time and they aren’t going away in the near future.

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