Last Wednesday, many of us American Studies students attended James Fallows talk "Media and Democracy". Fallows discussed the evolution of newspapers, as companies are moving away from print and beginning to publish their news online. Fallows quoted a colleague of his that said he liked printed compared to online news because flipping through a newspaper can yield a sense of doneness. More importantly, after the evolution to online news is complete and the printed news is extinct some will have difficulty receiving news. There are many people without a computer or internet access that would be potentially unable to receive their news from an online subscription. Essentially, I believe that because not everyone can afford the most current technology they should not be unable to keep up to date with current events in our nation. However, printing companies will only work in their own best interest. Unfortunately, if they believe they have a stable amount of subscribers they will undoubtedly begin to publish online and eliminate print. This is because "for a paper the size of The Washington Post, which prints about 700,000 papers a day and 1 million on Sundays, that could be an annual savings of more than $110 million, with newsprint at $625 per metric ton and rising." Fallows also stated that in terms of costs, printing newspapers is more expensive than paying the salaries of all the newspaper's writers. Eventually companies will cut the costs of printing by eliminating printed newspapers all together, and profits would be made through the sales of subscriptions to online publications. Could this leave less fortunate people without access to news? Do these people unable to afford online publications still have a right to access some sort of "news"?
No comments:
Post a Comment