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Online News and Print’s Future Essay

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Online News and Print’s Future

The Internet’s influence on our lives has spread throughout. Researching, shopping, job searching, and more can all be done with a keyboard and a few clicks of a mouse. But this ease of use casts a shadow on the future of printed information. The Web’s instant knowledge has changed our reading and writing habits and has made print media seem old-fashioned. One of the first industries to lead the change was journalism. As the Web expanded in the mid 90’s, online editions of popular newspapers surfaced and opened a new field for seeing and telling the world's events.

Even before the Web boom, the advance of another technology had already started to threaten print newspapers’ survival. In his essay …show more content…

Print newspapers were the primary source of news ‘'til the emergence of TV and radio.

Since their existences, TV and radio have chipped away at much of print media's audience. They've made news more immediate and simpler for wider consumption by reducing reading elements. In addition, TV added vivid, moving visuals that appealed to audience's emotions. An example can be found through a 95’ ABC documentary on Bosnia where images of skeletal prisoners and crying women emphasize the failings of UN forces (Stephens 420). Even with these advances, there would still be room for the rise of technology that would combine the visuals and immediacy of TV with the reading components of print.

The Internet boom came in the mid 90’s and changed much of how we communicate with each other. Individuals could now write to each other nearly as fast as talking on the phone and gather instant information for almost any subject they'd want. But soon began some fundamental changes to the ways news was presented by newspapers and treated by reader.

The Internet changed many job roles in Journalism. Beginning with production, online newspaper replaced the costs of ink, paper, and delivery with the costs of buying and maintaining network servers. This reduced much of the costs, but eliminated the jobs for people who did those the ink/paper/delivery tasks. In ways, this was a transition from ‘manufacturing’ jobs to ‘tech’ jobs that was

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