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Tucker McIlwrath, Jake Mikucki, Lauren Pearce, Hannah Sheehan, and Michael Noone
Newspapers used to be one of the only ways to keep people up to date on what’s happening, whether that be local or national. However, over the past two decades or so their sales have been dropping and newspapers are becoming obsolete thanks to this new digital era the world has entered. We have become dependent on the internet because of its constant updates and 24/7 stream of information. Newspapers are having trouble competing against the digital world for a couple of reasons.
One of the biggest things that this new medium has taken over is advertising. Newpapers started out being one of the few places where companies could advertise their new merchandise by purchasing various amounts of letters and space in that mornings paper. But now televisions can show footage of the product being used which is something newspapers can’t replicate until holograms are made accessible for everyday items. That’s not even mentioning the internet. Google throws advertisements at its users by the ton. The internet has an infinite amount of room while newspapers have to stick to only a few pages.
As mentioned before, newspapers also can’t put out a quick, steady stream of updated information like the digital world can. On the digital world’s side there’s urgent news updates interrupting your favorite program, there’s Amber Alerts and countless different social media platforms that are kept updated by the minute. A newspaper updates you once every day and that’s still incredibly fast.
The final, and perhaps biggest, reason that the newspaper industry is falling to the digital world is money. Some of the different websites that are updated 24/7 with new facts and stories are free to access while most newspapers cost money to receive a copy of. Some papers have tried converting over to an online base but many still require money to access the content. This is a major disadvantage to them as a lot of websites allow you to access their content for free.
This article discusses the experiments done in 2015, studies of why millennials are still engaging in magazines when technology is on the rise. These procedures were done through mostly focus groups and surveys, they analyzed the data by gender, ethnicity, etc. Focus groups were given magazines and then online articles, and they were analyzed through their response to different types of media. Through their reactions to all media, the experiment would test why they still are drawn to magazines, what gratification millennials still got from magazines in the Internet age.
What the study shows is that the online surveys were given far more attention but the focus still showed interest in the overall aesthetic of reading from a magazine. The millennials were more interested in how it felt to hold a magazine and still have the nostalgia of having a physical copy. They said that they appreciated the fact that there still was a magazine business and that news, celebrity information, and photography still had that as an outlet.
The results also showed that the girls responded more to the magazines then boys did. Which was one of the outcomes of the statistics that they expected. But, they did show more gender based magazines. The guys enjoyed their male based magazines and the girls responded better to the more female charged media. And, with more gender-neutral magazines it was an overall apathetic response.
Even though they originally had divided the study into what gender responded to what and how, they had soon realized that that wasn’t the leading statistic. The ending evidence had shown that 84% of the people that still showed interest in magazines were white. Making the magazine business less of a matter of gender but a matter of racial interests.
This article is about how iPads and tablets may be the future for Magazines, this would be a negative factor affecting print media because it wouldn’t be print media, it would be digital media. Magazines would lose their purpose. Since everything is turning into apps, that is where people will go for these Magazines because now they don’t only have to just read, they can interact with quizzes, shop straight from the magazine, and have different advertisements flash before their eyes. Instead of reading about a story, now you can visualize it with video and hear it with audio. Getting rid of the “Print” part of Print Media entirely.
We used to be able to get entertainment from magazines, knowledge from books and the news from newspapers. With Digital Media on the rise all of those are combining into one. Making it easier to access but also putting people out of jobs. Magazines, once known for being the masters of “ink and glossy photo” are now only on screens. Losing the very thing that captivated people in the first place.
People born into the digital era are more likely to understand digital media, but what about those who only remember print? When digital media fully takes over how will they get their Magazines if they do not know how to work an iPad? Magazine journalists are shook. The industry is falling behind because of the advancement in technology. Journalists know they need to start delivering and accurately sending their messages in shorter time. This is a true challenge since any information is now at the tip of our fingers from our phones. They believe if they make their writings astonishingly irresistible, easier to enjoy, and involve everyone from school kids, to staff members, to senior subscribers would continue their membership.
The quickest way for a magazine is waiting at the mailbox for it. Nobody does that. The future for magazines is there is no future. About seventy percent of people would read some sort of magazine. In the past ten years, it has dropped fifty-nine percent and in the previous year forty-eight percent. At this rate, magazines will be gone no longer than ten years. Their audience is switching to phones and laptops for their news and entertainment.
The Future of Books and E-books
As society advances our technology advances as well, a substitute for a paper book is now an e-book. An e-book is a digital object with textual and other content, typically it has in-use features such as search and cross reference functions, hypertext links, bookmarks, interactive tools, etc (Carreiro 1). Contemporary society often claims that the publishing industry is dying and that the innovation of the e-book will eventually sentence the printed book to death. E-books are distinct from books in terms of media, distribution, functionality, management, quantity, copyright and fair use, information technology, cost, typology of e-books, reading device speciﬁcity or lack thereof, pricing, accessibility. E-books have an advantage over regular books in terms of creation, revision, dissemination, use, and access control (Carreiro 1).
Signiﬁcant changes in the book industry, including the increase in audio books, the Internet, piracy of books, and the newly invented e-reader. ‘‘media experts are predicting that digital publishing will completely replace traditional paper-and-ink printing’’ (Grover) In actuality, ‘‘computers and other new technologies may in fact be enhancing our ability to produce and distribute printed books, ensuring that books will continue to be a part of our future’’. Publishing giants all over have recognized this reality and have tweaked company strategies accordingly. books will now be stored digitally and transmitted electronically (Grover).
No one knows what the future of e-publishing will hold, but developments affect publishing houses, authors, and consumers alike. And while the ultimate fate of the printed book is yet unknown, for now, it is here to stay. The future holds a variety of options for writers. In January, Amazon announced that it was ready to offer authors a seventy percent cut of the sales of e-books for Kindle customers, stating that writers would make more money publishing with the company, essentially encouraging authors to circumvent traditional publishers altogether. However, the deal does not apply to the print versions. Writers are allowed to sell with other vendors, but must match or lower the retail price for Amazon (Carreiro 223).
2 key points
1. E-books, at this point are “another supplementary option to paper books rather than a replacement
2. This kind of technology is not foreign to society: “the electronic book is just as much a consequence of the application of innovative information technologies as Gutenberg’s were for books”
Works Cited
Belsie, L. (2010, December 28). iPad: Can it save the magazine industry?. Christian Science Monitor. p. N.PAG.
Stepp, C. S. (2008). MAYBE IT IS TIME TO PANIC. American Journalism Review.
Dekavalla, Marina. “The Scottish Newspaper Industry in the Digital Era.” Media, Culture & Society, vol. 37, no. 1, Jan. 2015, pp. 107-114.
Watson, H. G. “Road to Recovery.” Editor & Publisher, vol. 150, no. 3, Mar. 2017, pp. 46-51.
Bonner, E., & Roberts, C. (2017). Millennials and the Future of Magazines: How the Generation of Digital Natives Will Determine Whether Print Magazines Survive. Journal Of Magazine & New Media Research, 17(2), 1-13.
Carreiro, E. ([2010]) “Electronic Books: How Digital Devices and Supplementary New Technologies are Changing the Face of the Publishing Industry.” Publishing Research Quarterly
Grover, A. ([2016]) “E-Books as Non-Interactive Textual Compositions: An Argument for Simplicity over Complexity in Future E-Book Formats” Springer Science+Business Media New York 2016