Starting the day with coffee and the newspaper is a formula that works for me. The coffee wakes me and the newspaper introduces the day, informs, incites and inspires me. The ageless love for print news is my only bow to conservatism. It is a model that has its origin hundreds of years ago in civilized history. It is a model that has constantly been challenged by technology.
The challenges started more than 100 years ago. Initially, communications professionals had watched radio position itself as a news medium to the consternation of print media. It was a live and let live process as it sorted out the winners and losers. And it happened again when television challenged both radio and print. They had to change and accommodate each other.
But where we are failing today is in recognizing that the Internet needs to be accommodated in the same way. Nobody realized that our politicians would fail so badly in recognizing what that accommodation meant. When the new kid on the block lacks the disciplines and controls that impact all the other kids, you have allowed trouble on the street. The failure to tax and set realistic standards for the Internet has allowed this medium to have an unfair advantage over the older, established media.
There would be nothing stupider than for government to give money to preserve print media when it fails to tax or control the Internet that is causing the losses to print media. Government is there to level the playing field—not to decide who is to survive.
The people who make the ultimate decisions are the users. The only thing that users have to realize is that we all benefit if the rules are the same for all media. If an editor goes to jail for publishing false information, then Facebook and blogs must try for similar standards. And if a billboard company pays sales taxes on renting a billboard, then Google should pay taxes on its advertising transactions.
You will never convince this reader that print media is for dinosaurs. Print is a self edited version of news that is efficient and satisfying. Radio and television news are linear and you have to go through the boring to get to the stuff of interest. And on the Internet, you are never sure if you are being told the truth unless you can trust the source.
-30-
Copyright 2019 © Peter Lowry
Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to [email protected]