print: strengths and weaknesses

In Chapter 2 of Convergent Journalism, print is described as a “portable and permanent” medium –- you can take a newspaper or magazine anywhere and read it at anytime, referring to it again and again.

Because of portability, newspapers and magazines are still the most accessible news media. We can find them on street corners and in convenience stores, in waiting rooms and hotel lobbies, and even –- at least in this country –- peddled on the streets during morning rush hours. They are also the cheapest way of getting the news, at Php20 for a broadsheet or Php75 for a magazine.

However, while readily available, the print medium is limited by production schedule. Local broadsheets come out only once a day, but events don’t stop after the newspapers are printed. So after reading the news in the morning, you would have to rely on the broadcast or online media for updates. Or wait for the following day’s paper.

in today's converging world
The print medium is threatened by the immediacy with which TV, radio, and the Internet deliver the news. But because of the amount of space available, a newspaper or magazine lends itself to long and detailed news reports –- such as investigative reports. This can also be said of the Internet, but with a difference: stories are archived and fees charged for retrieval, or worse, links to stories can become inactive.

In the Philippines, newspapers are not about to be replaced by the Internet as a medium. Not everyone has access to a computer or laptop, and to the Internet. Also, local news sites feature mostly reproductions of reports found in print. Perhaps that is more a question of economics than anything else. But online news must be written for the Web to adapt to the “scanning” behavior, as Jakob Nielsen describes it, of Web readers. See the CyberJournalist site and Nielsen’s columns (click here for guidelines on writing for the web, and here for web reading patterns).

Meanwhile, the print medium continues to survive because it adapts to the habits of its readers. The Philippine Daily Inquirer, for instance, is now seen in other forms that offer the news to specific readers –- to commuters, in the form of free tabloid-size papers; and to younger readers, in compact format that delivers more concise news in visually interesting layouts.