Today during our meeting with a magazine editor, a rapidly escalating issue was brought to light: the decline of the physical, material magazine/newspaper, as the Internet and online media rises to the forefront. Facebook, Email, Twitter, Youtube, Instagram, Tumblr, and Pintrist, all outlets of communication, have contributed to an online “golden age,” which has already caused the United States Postal Service to suffer (no more snail mail except when Grandma’s birthday comes around). News is increasingly becoming an online medium, with alerts from Twitter, Google News, and CNN.com. Newspapers, suffering at the hands of the Internet craze, are being put out of business left and right. Why pick up a paper when news is readily available on your Iphone through a search engine?
The same problem is affecting magazines, which, in their glory days of the ‘90s, were the premiere source for style, business, and the latest gossip. Now the latest trends and chitchat are all on the Internet, where any blogger can write on a subject or post a photo. In an attempt to meet the demands of the general population, most of whom are Internet users, many magazines have begun using online formats, and soon, may use this method entirely as the printed word becomes obliterated in an online world.
The future of digital technology is upon us: people swiping their ipads to browse the latest Vogue, reading Buzzfeed to discover the newest trends, and tuning into an online broadcast of BBC. When we can access our information at the click of a mouse or tap of a screen, libraries, schools, magazines, news and media must struggle to keep up with the ever-changing fast paced technology of the age. It will be interesting to see who can keep up–and who will fall to the wayside. One thing though is clear: in a time where anyone can share anything, the competition in the field of media will only become greater.
How does the phenomenon you describe relate to the decline and loss of physical film as a medium? Does a film’s medium matter less as long as you can see and hear it?
I think it’s important to keep physical film– we talked about how film being stored digitally is often lost as digital technology updates around every 3- 5 years, and many films get lost in translation. It’s sad that some of these films aren’t being preserved, and with physical film it’s much easier to (some have kept around 100 years). With the transition to digital, I predict more films will be lost unless we come up with the technology to quickly and efficiently transfer these films from one digital version to another.