Online Newspapers Vs. Print Newspapers

Online newspapers vs. print newspapers

In an early morning of a winter day with cold wind and snow breeze blowing out, hardly any people are waiting to put a quarter into an old automated newsstand to get there newspapers at a corner near the Union Station in downtown of St. Louis city. Hardly to find young people in that crowded but aged people are likely to prefer the traditional newspapers than the new type which is online. In contrast, most of young people who tend to spend most of their lifetime on the internet would rather choose online newspapers to update news. It is a recent debate whether the effectiveness of online newspapers are against old time print newspaper.

In this paper, I am going to look at how online newspapers influence people and the differences in compare with print. Additionally, finding out the answer for the question about the long term survival of print newspapers is also a point in this research paper.

First of all, online newspapers have certain advantages to reach to the public over traditional newspapers. Since the first websites were set up and put online in the early of the 20th century, the new type of newspaper has created more opportunities to not only the readers but also newspaper industry.

The first advantage of online newspapers is its convenience to access. Not many print newspapers are free to the readers but mostly online newspapers are. Therefore, numerous people can come close to newspapers to update information. It is also convenient as the Internet has become a part of modern life. Young people who spend most of their time on the Internet to study or to work are likely to update news through the Internet than buying newspapers. A survey of The New York Time online media kit in 2007 showed that the number of online audience is more than twelve fold to print audience (13,372,000 online unique users in compare with 1,120,420 weekday print circulation and 1,627,062 Sunday print circulation) (“Newspaper Online vs. Print Ad Revenue: The 10% Problem.”).

The second advantage of online newspaper is its friendly interface. It is undoubtedly that online newspapers are more interactive than traditional newspapers. Online version has email addresses, bulletin boards and chat rooms. These tools seem to be useful for readers to give quick feedback than the print version. Moreover, the search engine is a perfect tool for linking to other sites. In terms of layout and figure, online versions fluctuate impressively in their size. More features and more imagines make online newspapers are more attracted. (Dominick 88)

The third advantage is that online newspapers can be updated even every minute whether international, national or local news. For this reason, reporting breaking news is making an additional benefit for online newspapers.

These advantages above created a marvelous progress in newspaper industry. If there were about 20 daily papers had their own websites in 1994, this number had reached 1,100 after ten years. Thus, it is truly to admit the effectiveness of online newspapers over the print newspapers. (Dominick)

On the other hand, recently online news also carries some of the disadvantages. We can image that, in the early morning, when everyone is waiting for the browsers to open the news, and the internet is slow, what would