Thanks to Jerz’s Literacy Weblog, I read about the oldest print newspaper going digital. It’s change that is significant, I think, in the digitization of our media.
For centuries, readers thumbed through the crackling pages of Sweden’s Post-och Inrikes Tidningar newspaper. No longer. The world’s oldest paper still in circulation has dropped its paper edition and now exists only in cyberspace. The newspaper, founded in 1645 by Sweden’s Queen Kristina, became a Web-only publication on Jan. 1.
It’s also symptomatic of the conservative/nostalgic forces that fear the changes:
“We think it’s a cultural disaster,” said Hans Holm, who served as the chief editor of Post-och Inrikes Tidningar for 20 years. “It is sad when you have worked with it for so long and it has been around for so long.”
Certainly, I feel nostalgia for some print media. Once I complained online that digital media was too ephemeral, that it might not be preserved. My friend Nick, savvy in thinking about media, countered that print media has always too been ephemeral. Hemingway, he noted, lost a briefcase full of manuscripts that are now forever lost. Archives go up in flames. People throw away diaries.
At least with online media there’s the chance that it’s in google’s cache if you lose your data.
Nice post, digitization made huge difference in publishing industry and it becomes best tool to generate the revenue for the print publishers. Many of the publishers are following this trend as online readership rate is increasing rapidly. There are more benefits from digitization of publications when compare to traditional publishing. There are some companies like pressmart net helping the print publishers in distribution of the publications through web, blogs, social media, IPods, RSS, mobiles, etc… These kinds of services will definitely more helpful to the publishers.
Thanks John, but if this is your company (which I suspect it is), I would appreciate transparency.