Comm455/History of Journalism

I find it difficult to explain the slow death of print media to my older family members.  I try to explain that my generation receives news primarily through social media and the web instead of print.  They simply cannot imagine living in a world without newspapers.  Like Dean Censer, they are also weary of the credibility of Twitter and Facebook.

I started writing for the online magazine George Mason Her Campus this semester.  I try to share my writing with my family, but it is a struggle for them to open a web browser, let alone read from the computer screen.

I started to consider how will older generations receive their news in the future? When I’m 85, hard of hearing and not partial to reading text off of a luminous computer screen, what product innovations will help me receive news?  Will I be able to use the iPhone 300 because I grew up using the iPhone 4? Or will my media diet be based solely on television and radio?  How will these media limitations impact society?

Credit: www.geeksaresexy.net

My house is filled with framed newspapers commemorating super bowls and presidential elections.  What will people save on historical days to come in the future?

I think nostalgia may keep the major newspaper companies running for longer than 20 years into the future. Nostalgia has kept the penny and the nickel around, even though they both take more money to produce than what they are worth.  Magazines may have a better shot of surviving the next couple of decades, but can magazines suffice as the only print media?  We’ll see.