Print Journalism Facing Serious Extinction Threat

Everything is online. Readers are online. Television and radio stations are broadcasting real time. Social media telltale so strong. Newspapers come out tomorrow, so late. 

Breaking Story.

Everyone is here. The leading broadcasting stations reset their cameras and beam live the occurrence, their flamboyant reporters chew it to the last bit for their consumers, then later call in sector analysts to the take the story forward, further chewing. Further, they initiate an investigative series on the same, every angle of the story attacked and broken down to the last segment. 

Meanwhile, the I-pad guy, the Smartphone lady, the commoner’s phone, are all flashed on, internet clicked on, Facebook, Twitter, G-mail, Yahoo and others come to live. The story is posted; the millions of facebookers read, comment then share it. More get it. Twitter is also heating up. The ‘Big Story’ attracts hundreds of tweets and retweets. It’s also shared. A short-while it’s trending. E-mail giants pop the news. Every human being, animal and robot gets and knows about it.   

In the evening, 12 hours later, the whole nation, even the very last head in the remotest of areas would have had at least a glimpse of it. 

24 hours later, cometh the paper, the good newspaper. Front page, those pictures the TV kept focusing on the previous day, its next neighbour, the headline, regurgitated-picked from the several shots carried by the national TV and fondly mentioned on radio. Still, the social media enthusiasts, powered by community journalism inkling, would have had better pictures. Bloggers had better analyses. Readers would have been fed enough by them. Buyers, newspapers would not have them-they are instead at home, office, lecture halls or in the toilets surfing the breaking news websites. Librarians and archivists—the planet’s fewest habitats— got one, two or three, for reference-the only remaining job for our beloved newspapers. 

The Breaking news day cools, dusk comes and finally night falls. And this nightmare roars louder; the media faces a bite off; one of its once seemingly eternal colleagues precariously hangs on to the hoop, for soon, it will not be part of the hoop. It would have stooped.  Print journalism faces a real threat. Daily newspapers are and would soon not be the news in-thing. They may be extinct.  

Apart from being references, their other remaining jobs: carriers of renowned columnists’ thoughts, wrapping the butcher’s goodies, advertiser’s business home and political rivals’ weapons of verbal destruction.  What else? Joining the dinosaurs!