Question

With the rise of social media and digital platforms, some say "Print is dead". So, what are your thoughts? Provide at least 2 solid reasons to support your opinion when answering this question with at least 300 words.

Answer 1

With the invention of computers and internet it was expected that these technologies are going to change the way things are done in the near future and the same happened. The rise of social media and digital platforms gave rise to newer business models which replaced few of the things including how people read.

I remember a time when people used to wake up and first go to look for the newspapers to find out what in the world changed yesterday, the books were purchased from book stores and the magazines used to get delivered at home weekly but today the dissemination of news have become real time affair and social media platforms play a great role in it. All of the major media houses have presence on different social media platforms and people get news from their pages and handles in real time. The newspaper companies have mobile apps where one can read all the articles and news which will be printed in the newspaper tomorrow and that has reduced the number of copies which was usually sold in the market when digital platforms were not available.

Technologies such as e-books, PDFs. Amazon Kindle, Audible Audio Books have made the book and magazine reading effortless. One can carry a number of books and magazines in his smartphones, laptops or digital reader devices and those books and magazines can be purchase and downloaded online almost instantly and this has certainly brought an impact on the print industry.

As per an article about newspapers average weekday circulation fell by 7% the print circulation has declined by 9%, while digital circulation increased by 2%. Sunday circulation of newspapers also registered a de-growth of 5% while digital circulation rose by 4% for most of the major newspapers operating in the US market. This fact is enough to establish that we are moving towards an era where the print media is going to decline further and the digital media is going to rise.

The younger generation including millennial are more comfortable using their gadgets to read books and magazines and the older people too have learned how to read newspapers on a tablet instead of it printed form.

I do not agree with the blanket statement where I could say that "Print is dead" because books are still published and sold in the market, newspapers are stull circulated and magazines are still bought from the newsstands. There still lies a huge population who loves to read physical newspapers and books and this will keep the print industry running. Yes, I can agree to the fact that print is on decline and the social and digital media can take over print in the near future.