When you wake up in the morning what is the first thing that you reach for? The light? The television remote? Or is it your cell phone? Nine time out of ten people reach for their cell phone to check messages, missed calls and social media accounts for updates from friends or media outlets that they missed while they were sleeping. In the past two years as sad as it is to say, most of the information that I have gotten about world events has come from social media such as Twitter, Facebook etc.
In the last couple years the use of the Internet and other electronic media have been on a steady rise compared to the use of print media, the flexibility that comes with the use of electronic media is what is truly “killing” print industry. The flexibility that allows audiences to get the news that they want and at a time that is convenient for them, in many circumstances schedules don’t always make it easy for people to watch the news or pick up a newspaper. The ability to pull up a website that has all the day’s event right in front of you for free and all you need to do is just click on the tab, this makes it very hard for even the biggest print media advocate think twice about buying a $1 to $1.50 paper.
Some people think that with the decline of newspaper sales and the closing of many small locally run newspaper the demise of print media is an inevitable event that the Internet is responsible for. I don’t that is the case because as much as you may want to blame social media or other electronic entities, they will never be able to provide the type reputation that newspapers have built up over the decades when it comes to reporting the truth. I know that newspaper does not have a squeaky clean reputation but when print makes a mistake reader know who to take up their grievances with concerning flaws and misreporting. When it comes to Internet sources you are never sure where they are getting their information from. Blogger’s have the ability to get there report out quickly but at what cost? Have they looked into the speculations or researched the information they are reporting? I honestly do not know but I do know the blogger’s reputations are far less respectable than those of newspaper that have been around since the colonial times.
Great article! It’s funny how that you mentioned what the first thing that the average American now reaches for when they first get up… I never thought of that. Very good point. I also loved the fact that you mentioned how you have received most of your “news” information from social networks… I wonder how many others are like that.