There is an adage – old is gold. Not all the time these stands the test of time.
Journalism, once-upon-a-time started through newspapers, as one aspect of it. In the good old days itself, priced very affordably, this was the chief source of news consumption, since TV and Radio was not affordable by all and sundry.
Cut to the digital day-and-age, in the rapidly and robustly changing IT era, leave alone AI, digital media is increasingly taking over print media.
Classic instance is Sri Lanka and the decline that serves even as a case study. Especially since Covid-19, the newspaper scene has been on a steady decline. In fact, since the global disaster only, situation has sharply deteriorated.
Reasons are very many – inability in adapting to the times and trends, insufficient resources (finance, resources to print a paper, import cost of materials), only to name a few.
There is enough demand for newspaper journalists, be it to retain the existing or recruit new, including training them. However, the remuneration remains below par, discouraging many excellent print media writers.
This has resulted in numerous interested talents entering, getting a feel of field, and leaving, not finding the pay exciting.
Sri Lanka remains an example of plenty of potential, but nothing substantial can be done.
The startling and striking factor is, one Sinhala-daily, Ada, (today in English) was forced to shut down barely weeks ago. The reasons that have emerged are also common to it’s sister papers under the same newspaper group and their rivals.
Other languages papers have been forced to discontinue certain sections, or cut short the pages allotted to them.
The Island newspaper, another English-daily, an iota of English print published throughout the week has been silently struggling and scraping through battling past the hard-to-survive scene.
Another not-so-bad example, however, explaining volumes of the growing crisis is that of, Tamil Mirror, Wijeya Newspapers Group’s solitary Tamil-daily.
When they were launched, it was yet another tickety-boo tale of printing daily. However, a turn in tide, and they were compelled to stop their distribution and become an e-paper.
The Island’s print media is navigating through a scary path. Going forward, even few years down the line, digital media is inevitably bound to grab it.
Print media perishing would be a heartbreaking sight to see, especially for those who would have worked in it.
