Why Bother with Paper When We Have the Internet?

Printed press, such as newspapers and magazines, will become obsolete in the next decade or coming decades. As the use of PDAs, laptops, and tablets becomes more widespread for business and personal utilization, there is ever increasing demand for electronically published news - and higher expectations of up-to-date, live news feeds. Concurrently, the counter-effect of such demand is the decreased usage of printed copies of the same publications. This changing landscape in the printing industry will lead to the inevitable conclusion of the extinction of hard copy printing for news and media publications.

As technology changes the speed at which information is delivered, the old method of waiting to read yesterday's news in the morning paper is simply not sufficient in today's business climate. The senior management of many companies edge out a competitive advantage through gathering information before their competitors. Supply orders, financial decisions, and public relations can all be dependent upon staying up-to-date with live news and media feeds; and the printed press simply does not offer this advantage. Not only is the increased use of electronic devices to access news and information key to this changing industry landscape, but a parallel growth in the technology of internet access availability also spurs on this demand. The device is only half of the equation - having access to the news through the device is the other half. We have already morphed from a society of dial-up to WiFi, and now we have air cards and satellite reception availability even on commercial flights. In the next decade, technology will develop and continue to exponentially increase the availability of online access - thus increasing further the practicality and demand for online news and media resources.

As people demand more electronic news, at a faster rate of delivery, the already cost-intensive printed products see a growing marginal cost as demand for those products decrease. The economies of scale which originally kept printing companies' profit margins in the black are diminishing, and eventually the logical business decision for all new and media firms will be to cancel printed copies of their products. Time and resources can be re-allocated from the costly printing to increasing staff writers and reporters to ensure more up-to-date digital news. Printing companies will have to change their business focus, or ultimately go out of business as their products become a thing of the past. To put it simply: there's an app for that - so why bother with the paper?

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