Are We Done With Print Press Era?
Recently, the traditional press has witnessed a real crisis, which has been increasing lately as a result of the communications and information revolution and the emergence of new media platforms and social media applications. This issue is represented in the reluctance of many readers to acquire or read paper newspapers, the emergence of a new younger generation that no longer deals with paper made it even harder to produce printed media content. The change in the patterns of interest and reading among the knowledge society and the spread of the culture of free access to information are mainly what is stopping the printed press from spreading. All this has led to a steady decline in sales of newspapers and a decrease in their revenues from advertising, which is moving rapidly towards the digital platforms.
The most important reason is the fast development that the world is witnessing, in this period because of the COVID-19 pandemic era.
According to “How coronavirus infected publishing”, an article on BBC News official website, in such hard times we should think first about the workers or generally creative people who have been living with “uncertainty” for a long time now. Moreover, many people lost their jobs and a large number of people had to produce their content digitally and completely move online media and leave the traditional media field.
This shift has taken many forms, as there are electronic newspapers that are a complete version parallel to their paper editions, and others in which electronic publishing is limited to selected parts of the content. However, most electronic newspapers do not have corresponding hard copies and it is limited to electronic publishing only.
Honestly, what makes things harder for us, whether we were the readers or producers, is that the old special bonding we had with magazines and newspapers that the older generations in families and friends were used to wait to get every morning to check the latest news, events, and ads.
