Media and news industry by and large is credited for altering the world into a global marketplace. The connect with the rest of world is through the common bond of news or information flow. News can be collected and assembled by many news resources which range from the print media, to electronic and further to the wireless sources. The news has become an integrated part of our lives and we can not do without acquainting ourselves with the latest events happening around the world.
Literacy and Growth of Newspapers
Material progress and intellectual growth have been fueled by the printed and written word from time immemorial. Literacy is traditionally associated with the printed word. Books, magazines and newspapers have grown in tandem with literacy. The growth of printing technology polarized the society into literate and illiterate. The power over the economic resources became the domain of the literates who were in the know of things and updated regularly by news and analysis by the newspapers.
Television and Online Media
Newspapers flourished on the twin planks of advertising and circulation revenue until the advent of a real challenge in the form of television. But the transient nature of the news in television made the audience look for corroboration and authenticity in newspapers that made it survive despite a fragmented market. The good thing about this threat was that it forced newspapers to look inwards. Product differentiation, improvement in color reproduction and cost reduction by technology upgrades improved the bottom line. This enabled the industry to sustain and co-exist with electronic media for the next few decades.
The rapid expansion of internet made it possible for online media to exploit newspaper's inability to present global news as they need to cater much of the local news. Newspapers can not access all major and minor news from wide geographical areas. Only online media could provide access to local along with international news and that too, by and large free of cost.
Newspaper's Portability Under Threat
The one major strength of the newspaper is it's unmatched portability which is difficult to beat as of now. With the introduction of portable e-book readers like Amazon-Kindle, we are witnessing a major technological leap in the book trade. The present models have one common problem – how to increase screen size without losing portability ? In the near future technology will enable screens which can be folded or rolled affording the luxury of carrying larger and more readable screen just like the present day physical newspapers. Improved versions of Readius from Polymer Vision an associate of electronic giant Philips should not take much time to take portable e-paper readers to the next level. We can look forward to more flexible and rugged models with new plastic chips. The present e-book readers have shown that we can carry whole library of books and the day is not far off when we will be able to carry a whole newspaper archive along with news-as-it-happens.
Of course such e-paper will not be able to swat a fly but then a newspaper is not a fly swat. It will also help the environment to increase the forest cover which has dwindled to an alarming level to manufacture newsprint.
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