Is print really dying? This debate has been raging in the news world for quite some time now. Whereas proponents of digital media see the future of journalism online, there are others who doubt the web’s potential to be the replacement of print that has dominated media landscape from the very beginning.
Things look dire for print. The digital revolution has opened floodgates of information, once a rare commodity that used to be parsimoniously distributed through print. The web is awash with all kinds of news. With people’s access to internet dramatically increasing in recent times, more and more newspaper readers are switching camp, putting a big question mark on the survival of print media.
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Speed is the name of the game on the digital superhighway. News portals have superseded newspapers with their ability to break the news and serve quick updates to a global audience at an incredibly minimal cost. What appears in the print today is merely an elaboration on the corresponding story the website carried the previous day. Use of multimedia on the web has made journalistic expressions more vivid and emphatic. Hyperlinks have connected online contents to global networks. Interactivity has made the discourse more democratic than ever before. Understandably, the tide is in online media’s favor.
But on the flipside, online media is viewed with disfavor for its lack of reporting depth and credibility. In the jungle of networks infested with lies and rumors, audience even this day turn to print when it comes to having full, analytical and well-verified news. Today mostly online versions run parallel to print editions. Online presence has become imperative in a sense that its absence in virtual space will mean marginalizing oneself from blossoming global digital phenomena. Digital ‘utopians’ back in the early 90s secularized internet as a new world where information should be availed for free. And this is exactly where the current existential crisis for print stems from.
In principle, no information can be generated without resource investment. Media is, rather than philanthropy, an industry. News contents are what it sells. It is bound to go bankrupt if those valuable online contents are distributed for free. No industry can survive or thrive without profit. With incremental costs of news production and distribution, and decline in circulation and ad revenues, many newspapers and magazines in the western countries, mainly in the US, have been forced to shut down their print operations. Reports are coming in that even Guardian and Observer are seriously mulling closure of their print ventures. Had it not been for financial loss, the Newsweek, the second-largest news weekly magazine in the US, would not have discontinued its hard copy edition after 80 glorious years of publication. Unlike in the US and Europe, the story however is different in Africa and most Asian countries. In particular, China and India are witnessing boom in their newspaper industry for reasons such as rise of urban middle class, low internet penetration and economic growths. Nepal’s situation is, in most respects, similar to that of China and India.
The latest reports confirm that internet penetration in Nepal is approximately 20 percent of national population, which means there are more than five million people who have access to free web contents. The fact that most of the internet users are from cities is certainly having major bearings on the scope of print readership whose strongholds are also urban areas. However, analysts believe that, despite the considerable portion of population having privileges of web access, it barely serves as an indicator of the country’s general tilt to the use of digital media as public consumption also depends on overall economic health including the issues of employment, power supply, stability and steady growth.
The Chicago Online launched by the US newspaper Chicago Tribune in 1992 is considered the first online venture in history. In Nepal, Mercantile in 1999 for first time began operation of www.nepalnews.com that hosted its own original contents besides archiving published contents of other publications. Today almost all broadsheet dailies, many weeklies and fortnightlies have their complementary online operations. According to Alexa global traffic ranking, in Nepal, Republica’s www.myrepublica.com, Nagarik Daily’s www.nagariknews.com, Kantipur Publication’s www.ekantipur.com, and The Himalayan Times’s www.thehimalayantimes.com are among the top four new websites having both online and print editions. Other news websites, notably www.onlinekhabar.com and, more recently, www.setopati.com are running online only. These sites, and possibly many others, are gradually evolving into strong, credible brands with their unique dynamic contents and overarching influence in Nepal’s digital media landscape. However, lack of clear revenue bases remains a common worry that the operators, who do not have print editions, have got to overcome.
One stark reality is, online may self-sustain but, without its press counterpart, can’t support sustenance of media house as a mainstream media entity. Therefore it is highly unlikely that online ventures will replace print editions anytime soon. Basically, Google ads, other regular ads and paywalls erected against online contents are three major potential sources of revenues for any news websites. The money that web portals in Nepal make through Google ads is minimal, while revenue from regular advertising is still a tall prospect considering its practical difficulties. Creating paywalls, thus making readers pay for online contents, can be the best approach but still the idea is not devoid of ethical issues in addition to the dangers of forfeiture of both online and off-line audience, poor traffic and search engine optimization. Today, several hundred newspapers including big names such as The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Daily Telegraph have paywalls of some kind as a survival tactics when print media is faced with yet another existential crisis in this internet age.
The current debate centers on whether newspapers will be able to adopt survival skills to come to terms with online tide.
It does not stand to reason to blame closures of certain print presses solely on the emergence of online media, as the real causes could range from its own management incompetence to its failure to meet professional integrity resulting in once-loyal audience shifting their allegiance. Also at one extreme, today’s debate is not about whether print, as a single entity, will be able to continue its existence. Rather it is about whether individual newspapers will be able to adopt survival skills to come to terms with the new tide. In Nepal, despite limited market, print is still expanding. The spirited initiative recently taken by an investor for an ambitious media launch speaks a lot about the national mood, reflecting that there is still so much left in print media in Nepal.
Let us not forget that print has historically defied doomsday prophecies of first radio, then TV’s rise. With its unique innate features, print has all along been able to make the society feel the need of its presence and thus has hitherto remained the leading mass media for hundreds of years. It is hard to say how long it will stay. What can be said for now is, until some effective model is perfected to monetize news websites and their contents, print will remain.
The author is online coordinator, Republica
arunrai149@gmail.com
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