Reading a newspaper in the morning is an essential aspect of American society. It is paired with the stereotypical view of a father reading the sports section while drinking coffee, while his child giggles over the funny pages.
However, this morning ritual is slowly coming to an end. Gone are the days of newspaper ink leaving traces on the fingers of readers. Gone as well is holding a tangible version of the news and having the ability to rip out a worthy article or circle a hilarious comic.
Yet with the push to save the environment and limit the use of printers, the news has been transferred to online platforms. This move is brilliant for this fast-paced day and age, when people on-the-go cannot afford time in the morning to leisurely read the newspaper and can instead scan breaking news on an iPhone. But for some, the traditional touch that print news once had in the journalism world is lost.
This month, reporter Eric Randall wrote a Boston Magazine article, “The New College Try,” describing an ongoing pattern of college newspapers turning to online formats over classic print versions. Randall cited Boston University’s Daily Free Press, whose board made the decision to go completely digital, and abandon its quad-weekly print paper.
The reasoning behind this choice is based on website redesign benefits and overall financial savings, according to the article. These reasons make sense, especially the financial burden of printing a newspaper, when universities must deal with divvying up a budget between endless numbers of clubs and activities all vying for cash.
Yet this switch also alters what journalism students, the same ones working for college newspapers, have been taught throughout high school and college. The commonly-used AP Style may go down the drain as various online news sources feel the need to relinquish this style and instead vye for an alternative method.
Perhaps future students will never learn how to layout a newspaper, and will instead be taught how to manage WordPress or other online programs that lay out the news for the customer. Even scarier, the term “newspaper” could mean nothing to future journalists, and become an unused and unnecessary term.
In the article, this move from print journalism onto the computer screen is deemed the largest shift in college media in history, as claimed by journalism professor Dan Reimold. For the first time, students are taking a step back from traditional methods taught in the classroom and are choosing to create a new version of journalism — in this case, a tech-savvy version.
The future will reveal how the transition goes, but until then, college students will find themselves in a flux between the old days of print journalism and the new possibilities of going digital.
Photo courtesy María Cabello, Creative Commons.
