Out of Print

Try to live without Google for a week, and write down questions that you cannot answer. This would be a great experiment to see how much we depend on internet, and to see how to live without internet. With internet, we seldom go to library, we seldom picked up a copy of paper in the morning, and we seldom call up others.

Also try to live without paper and any print copies for a week and to live only with information online. Is that possible? Do you have a good quality of learning in a pure online environment?

Journalism could be one of the industries that received the most impacts after the advent of internet. Daily newspapers are losing readers, advertisers, and market values. People are talking about online version of paper with interactive communications, incorporation of multimedia clips, and active archives. The physical print papers look outdated and slow. The New York Times has its stock decline by fifty-four per cent since the end of 2004 and an analyst at Deutsche Bank suggested that client sell off their Time stocks.

Yet, pick up a copy of the New York Times. "All The News That's Fit To Print" is the quote on the top of the front page that catches a reader's eye. What does "fit to print" mean? This "fit to print" hints the power relation between the gatekeepers and readers. The gatekeepers, here the editors of the New York Times, have the authorities to decide what the important issues are that their readers need to know, and thus shape people's world view. When the Internet comes in, things suddenly change. The balanced mainstream media writing is questioned. The readers want more opinions, perspectives, and news on demand despite the professional judgment of news values. The Internet tears the banner of the exclusive role of a journalist and claims that everyone can be a journalist. People advocate the freedom of speech, and their ready accesses to voice their own observations.

Rachel Sterne, a young and beautiful woman, the founder of Ground Report, a citizen journalism for-profit website, hopes to, one, promote cyber democracy and two, prove that citizen journalists can make some bucks from their contributions. She has faith that people all over the world can submit their articles to this collective project. However, Ground Report has several essential problems. One, the advertising profits have not yet sustained the site. Second, the contributors were centered in the same area like India, Turkey or Pakistan, which makes Group Report sometimes look like a Turkish publication. Third, the quality of reports is not guaranteed. Nonetheless, it is still important for Ground Report to come in to make the one-dimensional world noisy, to make globalization not Americanization.

Content is king. To produce quality contents with thorough researches and interviews is still the core, whereas technical problems can be solved easily. It is like the ancient quarrel between humanism and science, sense and sensibility. We are glad that online media make news fancy; however, the traditional layouts of print journalism might still be valuable in its designed presentation, and its capacity to show readers information.

If one day, we have materials that deliver the quality of a physical paper, and give readers the equal experience of reading, I am sad but feel ok to attend the funeral of pieces of dead trees. But the substitute is not the Internet today. Online journalism has long way to go.