Expect More of This 12/31/07
Post newspapers close after 126 years
The Post newspapers printed their final editions Monday, ending a 126-year run. However, the final editions also carried some news — their parent company will keep a remnant alive in the form of a Kentucky-oriented online site.
The usual palliatory response to the burgeoning of new technologies is that new technologies do not necessarily obviate their forebears. For example, it is argued that just as the advent of film did not kill photography and the advent of photography did not kill painting, so will the advent of the Internet not kill print. However, the unfortunate reality is that, while some competitive mediums duke it out for a while, the natural tendency in any competition is for one party to win and the other to lose.
Film and photography provide their respective audiences with unique kinds of information. A person cannot normally stare at a film and see the same image indefinitely. By the same token, a person cannot normally stare at a photograph and see different images over time. Each medium offers something unique.
The same is true of painting and photography. A painting normally uses such tools as paint, brushes, and canvas to achieve a relatively abstract image as perceived and interpreted by a painter. A photograph normally uses such tools as a camera, light, and a light-sensitive surface to achieve a relatively concrete image as seen by a photographer. One rarely expects to see a photograph that looks like a Jackson Pollock painting or a painting that looks like an Ansel Adams photograph, because each medium is, again, unique in what it offers its audience.
Yet, can one say the same about the competing mediums of the Internet and print? More to the point, what does print offer that the Internet does not? Until the distinction is clarified and print is given a separate and distinct status as a contemporary medium that is worthy of imparting important information in a way that the Internet cannot, then I am afraid that print might soon find itself in a suffocating bind.
December 31st 2007 Information Science