There Is No Future for Traditional Print Media
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Nearly 600 years ago, traditional print media revolutionized the world, but now people are at a crossroad; fast paced technology advancements have created the useful and popular digital medium. As a result, reading books from the e-book, getting instant news from the electronic newspaper and searching unfamiliar information from Wikipedia is showing the general population is shifting away from traditional print media for their digital lives (Gomez, 2008). Some people think that digital media will not replace traditional print media because reading materials like books and newspapers can be seen everywhere. However, other people insist that traditional print media has no future because that digital media has many advantages than the traditional one. In my point of view, immense cultural changes have occurred in the digital world, and people are accustomed to use digital media for reading. As a result, traditional print media will disappear.
First, people may be in the habit of reading traditional print media, and it may be not easily replaced by the digital media. A survey by Deloitte found that “88% of magazine readers in London still prefer to consume articles via print, 35% subscribed to at least one printed book in 2011” (Hooper, 2012). It means people are used to read print books. On the one hand, print books and newspapers as significant mediums in the world have been around for a long period of time. Especially, for adults, they read books and newspapers since childhood so that they have special feelings about these accessible reading materials. For example, most of them do not like switch on their computer and stare at the screen for the fresh news after waking up. In contrast, many adults prefer to get the up-to-date printed information from freshly-printed newspaper. And it is an essential part of their morning routine (Swiss Post, 2012). On the other hand, young people are growing up with the internet. As a result, they may prefer to click the mouse to read articles or news from websites rather than to pay a hard copy of the book and newspaper in reality. Indeed, there is one graph for the sales data of e-book and hardcover among 1200 young people. It shows e-book sales increased 475%. However, print book only increased by 18.7% from 2011 to 2012 (Smith and Tam, 2012). Moreover, young people regard books and newspapers as expensive things. There is a survey among 3001 young people who are 18 years old, and states that only 27% would like to pay money for one book. In contrast, e-books will be accepted by 73% young people because some of them are free for downloading from the internet (Zickuhr, 2011). Therefore, the world is witnessing the generation change in the medium as the shift from traditional print media to digital media. In short, as young people are setting the digital trend for the future, which means traditional print media will fade out.
Second, traditional print media need paper. Because books and newspapers are made of paper so that they can be seen as physical objects, therefore they may have a financial value because some people like to collect books. For example, the first edition novel called The Catcher in the Rye was written by J. D. Salinger sold for $8000 in an online rare book venue in 2009. In contrast, the fifth edition of this book is only $21.95 (Syratt, 2010). Furthermore, Gomez (2008) even goes as far to say that the experience of reading has an advantage over digital books. For traditional print media, it is easy to cut things out, color-in, take pen to paper or stick it on the wall (Hooper, 2012). As a consequence, books and newspapers have an important place for people who want to touch pages and covers. Nonetheless, many trees will be cutting down to publish books and newspapers, and this might cause an imbalance between the environment and human beings. Pastore (2009) states that “one year of Sunday newspapers, produced by the New York Times, is responsible for the destruction and consumption of more than 3,900,000 trees.” It is a serious problem for people. Because trees can absorb and store great amounts of water quickly when there are heavy rains. When trees are cut down, this regulation of the flow of water is disrupted, which leads to flood and drought in the affected area. Thus, leading to disruption of human settlements and loss of life in thousands (Putatunda, 2011). However, digital media do not need paper, so it can save trees and save paper in production. People could download e-books from websites. “200 million free ebooks downloaded from Project Gutenberg and the World E-book Fair saved 3,200,000 trees” said by Pastore (2009). To sum up, in terms of sustained benefit for people and the environment, traditional print media has no place in the future.
Third, traditional print books are convenient to readers. For many reasons, the first one is that it easy to obtain. Print books are available everywhere; they are in bookstores, airports, supermarkets and libraries. For example, the British bookstore retailer Waterstones operates 296 stores in the UK (Stevens, 2011). Next, it is portable because a general book is approximately eight inches and weighs around 20 ounces. So books can be taken with a person anywhere, and be read everywhere. Last, print books are cheap. The paperback version of War and Peace is $10.2 which is cheaper than the e-book edition of $9.9. However, e-books have many advantages than the traditional one. The first advantage is that e-books are delivered more instantly. Readers can download digital reading materials and start reading right after making payment. In contrast, print books may take a few days even a few weeks to be delivered to people from different countries. Secondly, e-books are easily readable. It is easy to manipulate the data in e-books by changing font sizes, colors and styles; this is especially good for some readers who have vision difficulties. Furthermore, additional softwares are available for converting e-books into audio formats to help blind readers. Thirdly, e-books are more interactive. Authors can add video, audio