Hot topic: online media sources (not to mention user-generated news sources à la cell phone footage) relegating print media to the big permanent paper shredder in the sky. This debate sort of flared up on my radar screen a while ago with eBooks. Being an avid reader, I was mortified at people's suggestion that eBooks would eventually make printed books obsolete. Over my dead body, or at least not without a fight on my part. And by fight I mean "I think I'll go on a self-soothing spending spree at bookstores to increase revenue." Anyway, my point is this: I like having printed books around me. I like them because they can be beautiful objects in and of themselves and I like them because they are a tangible record of what I've read, what my interests are, and how I've become who I am. Perhaps in the future, if printed books do become extinct and young folks don't ever have the chance to turn a page while reading a newspaper or know that special hurt-so-good wrist strain of holding up a book in bed way past their bed time, they will not miss the lack. But since I grew up turning pages rather than scrolling with a mouse, I would miss the feeling if it leaves. Pun sort of intended.
All that aside, I've become quite enamored of the online print media lately and enjoy the wider accessibility to news that I might not normally be able to obtain in print here in the rather rural-though-college-town valley between three metropolitan peaks. So. Apply a little of that "make new friends/but keep the old" adage and be on your merry way.
Five articles of interest:
• Not so fast, harbingers of print media doom:
- "'Is Print Dead? Discuss!': Why magazines are in trouble, and the Internet won't be their savior"
- Gallup Finds 44% Still Read Newspapers Daily - As Web Reliance Cools
• "Seven rules for reading the paper" (Garrison Keillor, 01.10.07)
• "Media new and old merge at CBS" (reportage from CES 2007)
• an article about 'The Economist,' that periodical on the recommended reading lists of a US State Dept/Foreign Service recruiter and also of the Monterey Institute of International Studies' Grad School of Translation and Interpretation
• "Media Guy defines the terms you'll need in 2007"
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