Future of Print Media in the Electronic Age1

Print Media in the Electronic age: The Indian Context:

Wither the print newspaper?

Paper presented at a UGC seminar Future of Printed Media in the Electronic Age
Organized by Surendranath College for Women, Kolkata. February 2009

Abstract:
The relationship between the text and the printing press established by the German innovator Johannes
Gutenberg has survived for close to over four hundred years now. His innovation liberated word and
text from the short-lived wood-engravings and the constraints of precarious human hands. Publishing
could be done on a mass scale. The print media created in Jurgen Habermas term a public sphere for
political debate, and helped crystallize the notion that public opinion must be the basis of governance.
But censorship notwithstanding, the first substantial threat to the print media came through the
medium of the radio set. Signals travelled through the air-waves and brought news directly to the
listener. Television followed soon after. In the late 90s, the US Defence Department run-Advanced
Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) a system of inter-connected computers was de-shackled
from governmental control and the World Wide Web was born. Since the 90s, some quarters, have seen
a steady decline of the print newspaper in favour of the online source of news. But low levels of internet
penetration in India coupled with computer illiteracy makes newspapers still the preferred choice.
Online newspapers do not present an existential threat to the print media. What the print newspapers
can learn is the advantages of interactivity and democratization of content.

************

The 10th of January 2009 saw the last print edition of the Kansas City Kansan. But the newspaper is not
bowing out of business altogether. It has decided to put all its news completely online. The newspaper
joins a growing list of newspapers like The Christian Science Monitor and The Capital Times in the U.S.
which are abandoning the print media and are now available exclusively on the World Wide Web.
As a news report points out1, its General Manager Drew Savage said that, switching to an online
publication would save on overhead and allow for more investment in electronic media. After the
switch, the Kansans online traffic increased, Savage said. Readership is about 10 times greater online
1

Currently Assistant Professor Meraj Ahmed Mubarki, Assistant Professor in the Department of Mass
Communication and Journalism at Maulana Azad National Urdu University, Hyderabad. India
merajmubarki@gmail.com

than it is for the print edition.2 According to the news report, 40% of Americans get most of their news
from the Internet compared to the 35% who claim to get news from the newspapers. But the report
points out that this doesnt represent a decline in the popularity of newspapers. Rather it represents the
number of people naming the Internet as their primary source of news.
So what exactly does the future hold for the print media? Does it portent the death of the print media
and the end of newspaper as we know it? I would like to leave it to Cassandra2 to make predictions,
and prophesize the death of the newspaper. As Marshall McLuhan once commented, A point of view
can be a dangerous luxury when substituted for insight and understanding. Journalism academia like
the subject they teach must refrain from sensational and opinionated pieces. Opinion like a news report
must also be based on hard facts and figures and not guided by mere rhetoric and empty
grandiloquence.
Before we move on the debate about whether the online version will finally replace the print version of
the newspaper, we need to look back in time to see when this relationship between news and the
printing press was established.
In India during the Mughal period, news writers were appointed to various administrative units in their
territory and were charged with the function of sending reports to the headquarters of the
administration.3 The waqianawassies, or the narrators of incidents, were finally rendered obsolete
when the printing press was introduced in India. Like Columbus setting foot on America, the printing
equipment arrived in India by fault too. The missionaries who were transporting the printing press to
Africa fell sick and had to dock in Goa. We dont know what happened to the missionaries but the
printing press stayed back.4 Hickeys Gazette brought about a sea change in the way news was being
produced and distributed. Apart from being the first newspaper to be launched in India and also the first
newspaper that suffered censorship and was forced out of print by the government of the day, Hickeys
Gazette was a trendsetter.
But in the much larger context the relationship between information and paper (and by an extension the
printing press) predates Hickeys initiative. Though rudimentary printing technology was available in
China and Korea in the 14th century, German goldsmith Johannes Gutenberg invented the forerunner to
the modern printing press. His innovation liberated word and text from the short-lived wood-engravings
and the constraints of precarious human hands. Publishing could be done on a mass scale. Individual
types could be inserted to frame words and thus the word and its sum total the text was freed from the
wobbly human hand. Though this was a time consuming process, and still is, this was the only method
that was in use for years. And I might suggest is still the way of operation in many small printing presses
across India.
This relationship that was established by Gutenbergs press between the word (the text) and paper (the
medium) has survived the radio, the television and is as strong as ever, even in this age of blogs and
smses. With this coming together of news on paper, the newspaper came into existence, with a whole
lot of implications. Word could now be duplicated much cheaply, carried over long distances, and made
2

(Greek mythology) a prophetess in Troy during the Trojan War whose predictions were true but never believed.

available to a much wider circulation. Stone tablets were heavy for transportation; papyrus rolls didnt
agree with sea voyages, and the silk fabric couldnt last beyond a generation. Paper was inexpensive,
could be easily duplicated with great degree of portability. The printing press stirred up intellectual
thought, helping usher in an era of Enlightenment. In colonial America, the newspaper industry
supported the independence movement and advocated freedom. As Harold Innis points out in his book,
The Bias of Communication,
The influence of print [was] seen in Republicanism with the bias towards constitution and
documents and guarantee of freedom of the press and of the right of the Individual.
Measure to control and order this genie back into the bottle met with stiff resistance. Concepts like free
will and liberty began to be peddled for freedom of the press and protection from censorship. The Press
was here to stay. Its role in the human history of recent times is too well documented to be repeated
here. Suffice it to say that the press eventually expanded in Jurgen Habermas words the bourgeois
public sphere that had been created in the coffee houses and salons of Europe. Eventually the press
took upon itself that task of creating and managing an important public sphere, the newspaper column,
and in turn shaping and influencing public opinion. The press along with other fields of human enquiry
like natural sciences and philosophy became the place where the search for rationality could be freely
indulged in, public ideology pedaled, discussed and debated upon.

Notwithstanding the waves of censorship that the press was subjected to in the early part of the 19th
and the 20th century, the print media faced its first substantial threat from the airwaves. The challenger
made an appearance but was immediately monopolized by the Military. Its civilian use was banned by
President Woodrow Wilson when the US entered the First World War. But the newspapers claim of
being the sole mass medium for dissemination of news was challenged with the invention of the radio
communication system. The Westinghouse Electric Corporation founded the first privately owned radio
station, and aired recorded music generated by a phonograph, to encourage people to buy radio
receivers sets. Newspaper now had competition from the air-waves. The electronic media had arrived.
Even while the impact of radio broadcast was being analyzed, investigated and scrutinized, technological
advances led to the Television set. But it would be some time before TV would be mass produced, and
made available to the average citizen. Commercial Television as we know it today was introduced only in
1939 in the U.S. The Radio Corporation of America (RCA) exhibited television to the public at the Worlds
Fair in New York City5. Viewers were shown live broadcast of the fairs opening ceremonies. But then
again like Radio, commercial TV broadcast faced delay in its development because of the outbreak of
World War II. By the time the War ended four US companies were broadcasting television programs
into American homes.

The consequences were enormous. News could now be witnessed at places far away from where it was
happening. Pictures could now be converted into signals sent through the air waves and then be reconverted back through the receiver TV set. This was the second great alleged threat to the Print media.
Radios progeny provided sound coupled with moving pictures.
The internet like the previous technological innovations in communication found its first use by the U.S.
Defense Department which wanted to create a network of computers that would share data which
could survive a nuclear attack or major disruption. That network, the Advanced Research Project Agency
Network ARPANET eventually became what we today call as the Internet.
In the mid 90s, with cheaper computers and falling tariff rates across the United States, therefore by the
early 1990s the Internet emerged as a new medium through which news could be disseminated and
accessed by readers. In 1993 the San Jose Mercury News became the first U.S. newspaper to publish an
edition on the Internet. Closely following it on the heel were popular publications like Virginian-Pilot,
the Star-Tribune, and the News and Observer. The New York Times did not have a full site on the Web
until January 1996. Overall, about 100 newspapers went online in 1994, followed by about 600 in 1995
and another 1000 in 1996.
Current Condition.
As of now, according to a report released by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, the
Internet now has finally overtaken print newspaper as the principal source of news for the Americans.
40% of Americans get most of their news from the Internet as opposed to 35% who get most of their
national and international news from newspapers.6
Does this portend an existential threat to the newspaper? Not quite. Before pressing the panic button,
there is a need to look at the level of Internet penetration across the world. Region wise, America has
the greatest level of internet penetration. About 73% of the population has right of entry to the
Internet. Oceania/ Australia come second with about 59.5% of the population having access to the
Internet. Europe occupies the third position with about 48.1 % having contact with the cyberspace. Latin
America and the Caribbean have about 24.1% of their population having admission to the Web. West
Asia boasts of about 21.27% of its inhabitants accessing the web. Asia has internet penetration level of
about 15.32 % of its total population. While only 5.34% of Africas population has internet access.
Asians have just about 15.3% of the total internet penetration, falling well below the world average of
21.9%.7 When it comes to high levels of Internet penetration in the world, only four Asian entities can be
counted among the Top 25 internet users of the world: Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan.
The Internet came to India in 1995, when the Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited (VSNL) launched its
services. Even though Internet has been showing positive growth rate, its level is still abysmally low. For
while in 1998 in India, the number of Internet users were 0.1 % of the total population, that number has
now risen to 3.7% in 20078. Internet usage presents some interesting points. Internet is still an urban
phenomenon. Out of the 250 million people who live in urban areas about 205 million people can be
regarded as literate. Though this is not to belittle the efforts being made to introduce other regional

languages to operate the net, only 77 million out of this 205 million have knowledge of English, the
prerequisite language for operating the Internet and making use of the World Wide Web9. Not everyone
who knows English knows how to operate the Internet. So we have only 65 million people who are
computer literate. Out of this 65 million, 46 million claim are ever users having logged into the Internet
at least once. Which bring us to 32 million active10users; people whose surfing habits can pose a threat
to the print media. Availing of IT enabled services forms a chunk of the usage. The main application for
using the internet is:
For Sending E-mails (51%);
For chatting (11%);
For information (20%);
For entertainment (13%); &
For E-commerce (5%).11
There is no reliable data to prove those who have access to the internet log on to online news sources
including online newspapers. On the contrary the total circulation of newspapers in India has shown an
upturn and positive growth. With rising literacy there is a distinct possibility that the circulation of
newspaper will go up further. While the literacy rate has gone up from 18.3% in 1951 to 64.8% in 2001,
the number of illiterate persons still exceeds 304 million, making India the country with the highest
number of illiterate persons in the world. These figures however depressing portends the enormous
expectations for potential growth, once this disadvantaged population group is brought within the
literacy loop, and made available to the print media as potential subscriber.12 According to NRS 2005,
the increased reach of newspapers has been due to a rise in literacy from 55% to 64% in rural areas and
from 79% to 84% in urban areas. And so while the print media reaches 200 million and the satellite TV
reaches 190 million the internet is used by less than 1% of the population to access news &
information.13 Again if we look at the worldwide picture we see that global newspaper circulation is
rising, buoyed by demand in Asia and South America belying predictions of the demise of print
journalism14. The strong sales in Asia, which is home to 74 of the world's 100 best-selling dailies,
contrasted starkly with declining newspaper readership in the Internet saturated West.
India is not a web-saturated country. 60% of all Indian internet users are in or around the big 8 cities.15
And the media sites are still a prisoner of non-resident or NRI traffic, which accounts for 50-75% of all
traffic.16 Indians tend to be one of the most homesick expatriate communities in the U.S. The Web helps
ethnic or geographic communities abroad keep in touch with their state and city and people back
home.17 Again a Pew Research suggests that increased internet use creates appetite for in-depth
reporting and may channel readers to newspapers and magazines18. All this points out that on-line news
sources/online newspapers do not pose an existential threat to the print media. Nor do they constitute
what we may call a clear and present danger to the print media.
This doesnt mean that the Internet has nothing to offer and no innovation to teach. Newspapers have
learnt a lot from the extant technology over time. The vulnerability of the telegraph wire used to
transmit news during the American Civil War led reporters to invent the inverted pyramid, the most
preferred way of arranging news for newspapers even now. Reporters would often cable the most

important information in the beginning to avoid being snapped right in the middle of the transmission
process. Later on the invention of the emulsion and the photographic plate led to the inclusion of
photographs in newspapers which added a touch of authenticity to news. Television led to the
introduction of visual of graphic bar charts and cut-aways. Newspapers have kept in tune with time.

What could the internet teach the newspaper, or to put it the other way what does the internet has to
offer to the humble print newspaper?
It will be a long time before newspaper come embedded with audio file of the prime minister
Independence Day speech or the harrowing mpeg video file of rescue operations of flood victims
launched in a submerge district. Where the Internet scores, is its interactivity and the way it involves the
users. Newspaper content is still the exclusive domain of the newspaper wallahs. Much less information
generated by the ordinary user makes it way pass the gatekeeper. Baring a few openings of a grouse
filled complaint letter or a smartly worded comment; readers are passive consumers of news, having no
hand in generating information and limited in most newspapers to a far-flung corner of letters to the
editor column. Newspaper writing is the exclusive domain of experts, the Never-Say-Retired Bureaucrat,
the self proclaimed Sports Guru, the Mr Know-It-All-Diplomat or the Already-Had-Enough-of-Their-Say
Columnists. The monopoly these experts exercise over the management of public opinion has been
challenged by the internet that allows users to administer news and information. An interesting
innovative in the stream of journalism has been made by Ohmynews.com a news portal in South Korea
that was launched in 2000 and has more than 750,000 unique users everyday. The news portal has
about 25 trained journalists but has an additional 10 editors review article posted by more than 33,000
of its registered citizen journalists. South Koreas internet saturation is amongst the highest in the world.
An amazing 70% of its total population uses the internet. The public domain for debate and discussion
has shifted from the traditional media to cyberspace.
If the Internet is an important tool for democratic participation then a proper division of labour in the
management of news and opinion can make the print media truly democratic and participatory, and
thus more relevant to the needs of the ever evolving society. So while news can still be the domain of
the trained journalist or the professionally trained reporter, opinion can be further liberalized through a
deliberate policy of inclusion of the non-journalistic, non-expert community, what we call the ordinary,
non-celebrity citizenry.
Low internet penetration is no reason why the print media should gloat, or turn complacent. To
contrast the situation, within 6 hours of the 7/7 London bombing , the BBC received more than 1000
photographs, 20 pieces of amateur video, 4000 text messages and over 20,000 E-mails19. This is what
the print media is up against. Most of the news sites in India and are extension of the print version of
the daily newspaper; as such their content is not diversified and varied from the content of the print
media.

And according to NRS 2006 there are an estimated 204 million readers of daily newspapers and an
estimated 222 million readers of all publications in India. Close to 360 million literates or neo-literates,
who are categorized as NRS 2006 as those who can read and understand any language, do not read
any publication. They represent potential readership.
The 2007 annual report by PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC) on the Indian Entertainment and Media
Industry (E&M), titled A Growth Story Unfolds, projects that the print media will grow, at a 13 per cent
compound annual growth rate, from the present size of Rs. 85 billion to Rs. 232 billion in 201120
All this points out that while online news sources are not threatening enough to the print media there is
lot of innovation that can still be tried out. The print media is no mood of fading out just yet. Newspaper
executives largely seek to use online newspapers to defend the print editions existing market position.
Traditional media is struggling to capture and convey the full enormity of the contemporary Indian
experience.21 India has a long way to go. The traditional media will eventually have to decide a way of
increasing peoples participation in the generation of new content without compromising the
journalistic standards of objectivity, impartiality and detachment. The reason why blogging has caught
on is because it allows people to turn producers of information rather then just consumers of
information. Finding out ways of engaging peoples participation will emerge as a major concern of the
print media. In the end what matters will the core values of journalism and not the way it reaches its
patron.
References:
1

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/05/business/media/05drill.html?ref=media
th
See New York Times, Web Passes Papers as News Sources, 5 January, 2009, pg B3, New York Edition.
3
nd
Natarajan, J. History of Indian Journalism. 2 Reprint edition. July 200. News Delhi. Publication Division. Pg 2.
4
See the Indian Media: Delusion and Reality. Rupa & Co. New Delhi. 2006. Pg 13
5
See for example the section on Radio in Encarta Reference Library 2005.
6
See Web Passes Papers as a News Source, New York Times, January 5, 2009, pg B3, New York Edition.
7
th
See www.internetworldstats.com. Accessed on 29 January 2009.
8
th
See www.worldinternetstates.org. Accessed on 26 January 2008.
9
See I-cube 2007 Summary report issued by Internet & Mobile Association of India.
10
Active Internet users as those users, who have used the Internet at least once in the last one month.
11
See I-cube 2007. Internet In India. A report released by the Internet & Mobile Association of India.
12
Eleventh five Year Plan. Volume 1. Inclusive Growth. Oxford University Press. New Delhi. 2008. Pg 1
13
st
Saxena Sunil., Online Journalism in India-2000-2005 and Beyond 21 Century Journalism in India. pg 306.
14
Newspaper circulation on rise, just not in U.S See http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24935927/.
15
th
See Techpurush@everywhere.in The Telegraph, dated 29 January 2009, pg 1
16
st
Saxena Sunil,. Online Journalism in India-2000-2005 and Beyond 21 Century Journalism in India. pg 275.
17
See Indian news sites cater to Expats. http://www.ojr.org/ojr/glaser/1067999286.php
18
Nath Shyam,. Assessing the State of Web Journalism, Author Press. Edition 2005, pg 2
19
st
Rajan Nalini et al. 21 Century Journalism in India. Pg 205.
20
th
See Newspaper Futures: Indian and the world. The Hindu- 15 August 2007.
21
st
Brown, Robert., India: A Billion Testimonies Now. 21 Century Journalism in India. Sage Publications. New Delhi.
2

Suggested Citation:
Mubarki, M. A. (2009). Wither the Print Media? . Print Media in the electronic Age (pp. 12-17). Kolkata:
Surendranath College for Women.