One of the industries that appears to be suffering due to all of the technological advancements in our country print media. (The JH Photography/Flickr Creative Commons)
It isn’t hard to see that our world is becoming increasingly fixated on the digital age and less interested in older, less technologically-efficient ways of doing things. This makes sense, for the most part, as becoming more efficient at daily tasks should be a goal for most people. After all, why have a Rube Goldberg-esque machine taking 60 steps to perform a task that can be completed in three? Whether it’s asking Siri to look up a statistic, utilizing cell phones rather than snail mail or using an e-reader to hold thousands of books and magazines at a time, our world is more and more focused on leaving behind “outdated” methods of doing things.
One of the industries that appears to be suffering due to all of the technological advancements in our country print media. To put it simply: Many people don’t feel the need to read physical copies of magazines or newspapers because they can just as easily be accessed online. Even more so, the spread of news through social media has widely taken over the way that the average person receives their news, whether it is accurate or not.
This shift in the way the average person receives their news is not only a change in the method of information consumption, but changes the content of the news that is spread. If we focus solely on social media to spread information, we are losing the voice of experienced reporters, telling us their supposedly unbiased opinions. Bloggers and people on Twitter are typically not the ones going out and interviewing people involved with a story; they are the ones typing their opinions about the events without experiencing them first-hand. If we allow our news outlets to be reduced to oblivion because social media is deemed an easier way to gain knowledge, we will be missing out on the real facts of a story.
Newspapers may still be widely circulated now, but much of their presence lives online rather than in print. This still allows people to access their news from a reputable source, but it does change the way our news is accessed and distributed. If we focus solely on digital media rather than print media, those without access to reliable internet may not always be able to access the news. Additionally, thousands of jobs will continue to be lost by the people in charge of physically designing and producing a physical copy of a newspaper.
At The Daily Campus, we pride ourselves not only on our website, but on our ability to produce a physical, printed paper Monday through Friday. This not only helps keep print media alive, but also allows students to have access to the news around campus without the use of their phones or laptops. Whether it helps to reduce screen time or just gives students a way to catch up on the news while having a quick meal, print media is something to be valued at our university. It may be a dying form in some places, but print media should not be a dying form at UConn.
