The Tangible vs. The Virtual

When the success of newspapers came around fifty years ago, no one expected the threatening abilities of the internet. The so-called "Web industry" of Steiger began to attack the older newspaper business models. With the internet today, it is hard to think that people would prefer to sit down and read printed articles rather than click on random links and instantly read about exactly their interest. Are newspapers simply too slow? For decades and decades people would buy their local newspaper and catch up on the current issues. Newspapers reached a point where no cost could hinder their search for the next top story. However, even before the presence of the internet came certain television series which slowly began to take away from the newspaper. Such "video journalism" like '60 Minutes' brought to the world a virtual newspaper. Furthermore, online journalism came into the scene in the early 1990's, slowly damaging the success of the hardcopy newspapers. Newspapers could only learn and produce so quickly, while the internet was able to rapidly produce any amount of information at any given time. Even when the newspapers tried to dabble on the web, corporations found that their online information was too similar to their real newspaper. No new products or clever additions were seen. Other non-newspaper websites used the vast abilities of the internet to their advantage. By offering more, free information faster than any other news source, these non-newspaper websites began to flourish. With such later internet innovations as Yahoo or Google or any other prosperous search engine, the internet seriously hindered the success of newspaper.

While I personally still continue to catch up on news through actual newspapers and the internet, there is no doubt that the internet maintains several attractions that newspapers simply can not offer. When there is time in the day, looking over a newspaper is not a problem but when people are busy and on the move (like most are today) some source of digital news is just more feasbile and efficient.