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University of Central Florida

The Transition from Print to Digital Media

Madison Kimbell English II - 1102 Dr. Guenzel 16 April 2014

Kimbell 2 Abstract As a journalist major, I have become aware of the changes in media with the introduction of new digital technology. This has prompted me to research further about specific changes in media, the print industry, and how readers can benefit from using both print and digital forms of media. Digital media has created a worldwide availability of current news while making its availability easier and quicker for humans to have access to. Sources publish information for the purpose of providing knowledge and detail of information for the public. In the past, news was simpler, with no opinionated information but rather a detailed description of the event. Now, people experience opinionated news due to instantaneous publishing of new material. The generations affected by the digital-age have experienced an increasing demand for faster access to information because the human population wants to see new, different pieces of current events and news with new technology allowing for its easy and quick access. Past generations, people 50 years and older, have grown up with newspapers that were written with new material only once every day with magazines that printed once every week or even just once a month. Im researching this topic to explore the effects on readers, generally 50 years and older who experienced the thriving print industry transition to mass use of digital media, and publishers from new technology that has allowed for instantaneous access to news. Background Digital media includes a variety of different forms. Facebook, Twitter, online magazine sites, and online newspaper sites are only a few forms that have worked to achieve the attraction of an online audience. This wide variety of online media has allowed all kinds of different people to publish and access news. Blogs and social media sites, especially Twitter, have denounced the role of a Journalist, allowing anyone the capability of publishing news and presenting their

Kimbell 3 opinion on it. The public has found this access to constantly changing news as a benefit while the print industry is experiencing rejection from the publics new found interest in technology. How much longer does the print industry expect to live? And where will this new technology for media and news take us in the future? Keywords: digital media, print media, technology, digital age, past generation

With the introduction of new digital technology, the world has experienced a change in media. Sources are publishing articles at such a fast pace that it becomes less about the accuracy and relevancy of the news and more about entertainment and keeping the publics attention. Articles are published with a wide-variety of topics that have allowed for biased information, which makes for false sources. In fact, journalists are no longer the only ones capable of researching and publishing media. The digital-age has allowed anyone the capability to write and publish information online with no professional attributes to justify the information they claim. This lack of credibility gives the human population sources that may not be entirely correct. In fact, journalists have turned to Twitter to instantly send out a topic or title of breaking news for a large portion of the public to see at one time. With this, media sources have now found it easier to copy and paste specific information and breaking news from other publishers just so they can claim to have the story too. One study, conducted by Susan Sivek who wrote City Magazines and Social Media: Moving Beyond the Monthly, stated that Twitter and similar social media sites are changing city magazines relationship with their audiences. The study assesses the degree to which city magazines are using Twitter, engaging with readers through this medium, and addressing topics of local concern via Twitter, says Sivek, while city magazines have traditionally been published on a monthly or bimonthly schedule, clearly their Twitter efforts

Kimbell 4 have taken on a much more immediate nature, reaching audiences constantlynot only between issues but even throughout the dayto guide their daily activities. It is clear that newspapers have been faced with decline in circulation and advertising, and Sivek explores magazines as a form of the print industry in decline: City magazines typically have reported on stories well after the fact, offering a longer view and a more deeply reported perspective. They have also served as supporters of local business and tourism. However, with todays unfettered access to 24/7 audience through the web and social media, magazines have to work to be able to develop new types of reporting and audience engagement beyond a monthly publication schedule. The magazine industry will only survive if they find ways to maintain an audience through a changing environment, which they are currently exploring now. But, users need to keep in mind who they are receiving their information from. Companies involved in the print industry are increasingly turning to these social media sites to keep up with new audience expectations for 24/7 news, but online access incorporates both professional and unprofessional sources, and the news published from both are now a little more skewed than seen before. This skewed information stems from the opinionated articles that have increased in order to satisfy this growing demand for news. Authors of Digital Media, Megan Winget and William Aspray, reflect on technology making personalized and opinionated news available. Television is populated with news anchors and commentators, interviewers and expert interview subjects for every topic of interest. Talk-show hosts and celebrities and reality-television contestants and ordinary people constantly sharing or confessing their private opinions and thoughts by speaking directly into the camera, addressing mass audiences as if they were engaging each viewer one-on-one. Author, Louise Prowse, of Defining Decline In The Newspaper Press, also reflects on opinionated

Kimbell 5 news: local country newspapers offer a different relationship to their readers than metropolitan newspapers. Scholarship has singled out local newspapers as a different genre of media compared with metropolitan newspapers. Most media commentators agree that country newspapers tend to be non-controversial, personalized and achievement-focused while providing local news and reports on issues that directly affect their readership. This opinionated news isnt necessarily informing anyone. Its offering a specific and unique view of a current event that others may not agree with. With the introduction of opinionated news, many people have learned to favor the news source that relates to them and their opinions the most, such as, Fox News, CNN, ABC Network, and many others. For example, Fox News is biased towards more conservative-republican values versus CNN is biased towards democrat and liberal values. Although these news sources are presenting the public with current events, providing opinions on them can take away from the situation as a whole. With all of these changes occurring through the transition to digital forms of media, citizens 50 years and older have experienced these changes with extra dissatisfaction. The generation consisting of older people 50 years and up are accustomed to a thriving print industry with daily newspapers. With the introduction of this new technology allowing for digital forms of media, not only do older people have to adapt to this new technology, but they must suffer the loss of the print industry and its media output that they are so accustomed to. According to authors Wendy Olphert and Leela Damodaran, authors of Older People and Digital Disengagement: A Fourth Digital Divide?, For older people, being digitally included can help them to maintain their independence, social connectedness and sense of worth in the face of declining health or limited capabilities, as well as also offering new opportunities to improve their quality of life. At present however, access to the technology and to the

Kimbell 6 benefits is not equally distributed either between or within nations, and older people tend to be on the wrong' side of what is termed the digital divide'. Olphert and Damodaran continue, In fact statistics show that some users give up using the Internet, and there is emerging evidence that older people are more vulnerable to the factors which can lead to this outcome. Teenagers are often aware of this issue considering older people, such as their grandparents, rely on them to fix their newest gadget or teach them something about how to work and use it. According to authors L. Damodaran, C.W. Olphert, and J. Sandhu, who wrote about their conducted study called Falling Off the Bandwagon? Exploring the Challenges to Sustained Digital Engagement by Older People, The findings show that, contrary to some stereotypes, many older people are enthusiastic, competent and confident users of technology. However, they report a range of challenges in reaching and maintaining this situation. These include technological complexity and change, age-related capability changes and a lack of learning and support mechanisms. Intrinsic motivation and social support are important in enabling older people to overcome these challenges.

Not only do readers, specifically older people, experience negative impacts from the changes in media with the transition to digital media, but the print industry has experienced these impacts even harder. According to The Economist in The Newspaper Industry: More Media and Less News, for most newspaper companies in the developed world, 2005 was miserable. They still earn almost all of their profits from print, which is in decline. As people look to the internet for news and young people turn away from papers, paid-for circulations are falling year after year. Papers are also losing their share of advertising spending. Classified advertising is quickly moving online. Jim Chisholm, of iMedia, a joint-venture consultancy with IFRA, a newspaper

Kimbell 7 trade association, predicts that a quarter of print classified ads will be lost to digital media in the next ten years. Overall, says iMedia, newspapers claimed 36% of total global advertising in 1995 and 30% in 2005. It reckons they will lose another five percentage points by 2015. Even the most confident of newspaper bosses admit that they will only survive in the long term if they can reinvent themselves on the internet and on other new-media platforms, for example, mobile phones and any other portable electronic devices. Although, most have been slow to grasp this transformation. Now, researchers have been analyzing where print media is headed and why it is headed there. According to Paul Farhi, author of A Costly Mistake?, the reason that print has been in increasing decline began when the Associated Press decided a decade ago to sell its news content to online portals. According to Farhi, as the financially battered newspaper industry considers various schemes for charging its digital content, some look back ruefully on what news industry blogger Alan Mutter refers to as "the Original Sin" the more or less collective decision to offer free access to news online. Farhi continues, what if the world's largest news organization had decided to limit the distribution of news to its newspaper owners and its longstanding radio and TV clients? What if, in short, the AP had stayed within the family and not helped build traffic for the digital upstarts that have contributed to the demise of the traditional media? Jim Brady, who eventually left AOL to run washingtonpost.com, thinks newspapers would have stood a better chance if it had. Farhi remarks about Brady: When Jim Brady went to work as America Online's news director a decade ago, he knew he was joining one of the most important and powerful news organizations in the world. It's not that Brady was commanding an army of journalists and a network of news bureaus. Far from it. AOL's news staff consisted of fewer than 20 people. At the time, the online service generated almost no

Kimbell 8 original news. But AOL did have something else: access to the Associated Pressand that may have been plenty. Farhi then becomes specific about the benefit of the Associated Press: Throughout the 1990s, millions of AOL subscribers got their daily news fix from its package of wire copy. In time, AOL touted its massive news audience to attract other providers, including ABC News and CBS News, to provide content. These news sources saw how their audience was becoming attracted to this different output of news, and soon had hopes of receiving the same success, even though that has not been the case.

With new technology enhancing the way people receive news and media, worries on the decline of print media have sprung up with exaggerated distress. As much as technology has taken away from print, print media is still relevant today with the constant publishing of newspapers and magazines. Its not rare to see printed material in your local grocery store or coffee shop, and even on your front door step! Good news is that consumers can use both print and digital media to benefit their reading as a whole! Print media is still alive but that doesnt mean its still growing. Sara Aase, author of Print vs Online: Can There Be a Cohabitation of Competing Media and How Readers Can Benefit, puts these worries at ease. She interviews and surveys a publishing industry analyst, Bob Sacks, who confirms her statement, everybody's talking about the death of print, but that's just not going to happen, says Sacks, there's going to be billions of dollars for the next 20 years in print. Sacks does also mention that an inevitable change with the introduction of digital media is that the primary way people read will be digital. This statement is then supported with a predicted statistic from her interview with James McQuivey, a consumer products analyst for Forrester Research, who says, the sale of e-books is predicted to hit $3 billion by 2015, at which point that format, not the bound book as we know it,

Kimbell 9 will drive that industry. Aase, through her article, works with her readers in helping them to take the introduction of digital media as a benefit by using both print and digital forms to enhance the learning process through reading. Incorporating multiple different views of one piece of news by accessing it through both digital and print form can enhance ones overall knowledge of that current event. With opinionated news being broadcasted, readers can also use authors different view points on one subject to also enhance the overall learning process. With opinionated news being available in both print and digital forms, readers have easy access to large amounts to information to enhance their reading. In fact, digital forms of education are now present in schools and universities so enhance the learning process. A lot of writing is done on the computer in applications that include beneficial tools to enhance our writing and reading experience. From highlighting and note-taking tools in writing to audible books in reading, digital technology has presented many benefits for readers and writers that can be taken advantage of to enhance ones learning process. On the contrary, her efforts at easing readers minds does not ease the minds of publishers and writers in the print industry. Aase still admits that print is still in fact in decline and that eventually, the primary source of news and published works will all be digital.

Although most print-based companies are experiencing decline, some have came out lucky with the introduction of digital forms of presenting media. Christine Haughney, writer for The New York Times and author of Newspapers Post Gains in Digital Circulation, states that The nations newspapers suffered a slight decline in total circulation over the last six months compared with the same period the year before, but they ultimately benefited from an increase in digital subscriptions, which now make up nearly 20 percent of all daily circulation. She

Kimbell 10 supports this statement with pride for her job: For the 519 Sunday newspapers audited, total circulation declined 1.4 percent. The New York Times ranked first with an average circulation of 2,322,429, a 15.9 percent increase from the same time the year before. Although The New York Times saw an increase in members from their online website to access news, Haughney blatantly admits that other news sources have contrastingly saw a decline. An example of this is when she states, USA Todays circulation was down 7.9 percent, dropping to 1,674,306. The Los Angeles Times and New York Daily News followed in fourth and fifth places. The Houston Chronicle ranked second, despite a 5.8 percent decline to 1,042,389. The Los Angeles Times was third; its circulation remained essentially flat at 954,010. Although The New York Times saw luck in an increased circulation this year, it does not account for the un-luck experienced by other printbased media companies with their total decline in circulation. Henry Blodget, writer for Huffington Post and author of Some Thoughts on Digital Media and the Future of the Newspaper Business, describes it perfectly: this last point can't be stressed enough, and it's often forgotten: That digital and print media are different. One big reason digital newsrooms seem so foreign and stressful to those who have spent their careers in print is that the digital product, production schedules, goals, workflow, reporting styles, and skill-sets are so different. It's hard to step from a senior slot in print to a senior slot in TV without feeling like a fish out of water--and it's the same when moving from print to digital. That's the main reason it's hard for many print folks to make a mid-career transition. It's not just that succeeding in a real-time digital environment means working intensely and effectively. It's also that the skills required for success in each medium are different.

Kimbell 11 To conclude, the introduction of technology has enhanced a variety of oldfashioned techniques in all fields for humans. For reading and writing, technology has made the process easier and faster than ever seen before. People have come in contact with devices that have given humans never before seen tools that make reading and writing online easier. These devices give us tools for successful and influential note taking by providing all the necessary and desired resources to get the job done. The options for humans for reading and writing in the digital world is endless and provides us with beneficial opportunities that are unavailable without this new technology. Unfortunately, this introduction of technology has allowed for a digitalized world that isnt all beneficial. The introduction of digital media has presented humans with instantaneous access to ever-growing sources of news. This demand, in turn, is what has caused the print industry to decline while non-reliable and non-relevant sources of news spring up. Even though we are given a plentiful abundance of these resources, our news and media sources have become more skewed than before with the introduction of opinionated and personalized news. With this, writers dont need any qualifications to take part in publishing their work online. Opinionated news has allowed for a huge access of unique opinions and viewpoints that are all based around one current event. But this huge access doesnt mean that the news source is presenting the event or topic effectively. The information is skewed based of biased opinions that ultimately dont benefit any readers. Along with this negative impact for readers with the change in their media, the introduction of digital media has provided negative impacts for publishers in the print industry as well: print production is in decline and their transition to an online form is not only difficult, but doesnt present them any income or benefit for publishing news over the web. Lastly, the generation consisting of citizens 50 years and older have experienced the hardest transition with new technology. With their adaptations from a print-wealthy world to a world

Kimbell 12 where print is in decline and technology is on the rise, people 50 years and older know the worst of the changes. Their lack of knowledge in the digital world doesnt help with the loss of the print world they are so accustomed to. The transition has been difficult with waves of triumph and downfall for many, but there is some potential benefit for readers and writers who find the medium through both.

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Works Cited 1. Sivek, Susan Currie. "City Magazines And Social Media: Moving Beyond The Monthly." Journal Of Magazine & New Media Research 14.2 (2013): 1-17. Communication & Mass Media Complete. Web. 23 Feb. 2014. 2. Winget, Megan Alicia, and William Aspray. Digital Media [Electronic Resource] : Technological And Social Challenges Of The Interactive World / Edited By Megan A. Winget, William Aspray. n.p.: Lanham, Md. : Scarecrow Press, c2011., 2011. UCF Libraries Catalog. Web. 23 Feb. 2014. 3. Prowse, Louise. "Defining Decline In The Newspaper Press: Local Responses And National Narratives In New South Wales Country Towns 1945-2006.(Report)." Rural Society 2 (2012): 85. Academic OneFile. Web. 23 Feb. 2014. 4. Olphert, Wendy, and Leela Damodaran. "Older People And Digital Disengagement: A Fourth Digital Divide?." Gerontology 59.6 (2013): 564-570. Academic Search Premier. Web. 10 Apr. 2014. 5. Damodaran, L. L., Olphert, C. W., & Sandhu, J. J. (2014). Falling Off the Bandwagon? Exploring the Challenges to Sustained Digital Engagement by Older People. Gerontology, 60(2), 163-173. doi:10.1159/000357431 6. "The Newspaper Industry: More Media, Less News." Economist 24 August 2006, n. pag. Print. 7. Farhi, Paul. "A Costly Mistake? When The Associated Press Decided A Decade Ago To Sell Its News Content To Online Portals, It May Have Hastened The Decline Of The Daily Newspapers That Own The Wire Service." American Journalism Review 2 (2009): 36. Academic OneFile. Web. 23 Feb. 2014. 8. Aase, Sara. "Print Vs Online: Can There Be A Cohabitation Of Competing Media And How Readers Can Benefit." JournalOf The American Dietetic Association 4 (2011): 500. Academic OneFile. Web. 23 Feb. 2014. 9. Haughney, Christine. Newspapers Post Gains in Digital Circulation." New York Times [New York City] 30 April 2013, n. pag. Web. 23 Feb. 2014. 10. Blodget, Henry. "Some Thoughts on Digital Media and the Future of the Newspaper Business." Huffington Post 21 July 2010, n. pag. Web. 23 Feb. 2014.