Print is Dead: Books in Our Digital Age

There was a story from CBS News last weekend about the continuing decline of print media, and what the trouble that newspapers find themselves in could mean to the way news is covered. In terms of the current woes for most print publications, CBS News describes it like this: “Papers across the country have been or may be sold, with workers laid off as well. Major advertising revenue for many papers is down, too, and classified ads are increasingly being placed on Internet sites.” Why is this the case? Well, it’s because the Internet is more immediate, and people are online more often — and thus likely to view a news site — than they’re offline with a newspaper in their hand. After all, times have changed. “There was a time when the only way to find out what was happening was to buy a newspaper,” says CBS News, “but these days there are plenty of ways to get your news. “

In terms of the “print is dead” debate, on the second page of the story there’s a quote from Samir Husni, chairman of the journalism department at the University of Mississippi: “Every couple of years we seem to go through a cycle — print is dead, print is dead,” he said. “Anybody who is realistic will know that we will have printed paper products from now ’til eternity.” This is completely ridiculous. Of course we’ll still have printed paper products; people are saying print will be dead, not extinct. Not to mention that what they mean is “dead” as in a metaphor, meaning no longer relevant (since something that was never really “alive” can truly be dead). And to say that all of this recent debate is just a “cycle” is disingenuous at best, and delusional at worst. Because that would mean that the Internet itself, and the myriad of social changes that it has brought with it, is also just a “cycle.” But of course none of this is a cycle; instead, these are changes that are here to stay. In fact, if anything is a “cycle” whose term it just about finished, it’s newspapers themselves that are on their way out.

CBS News: Have Newspapers Reached Their Deadline?