When did the world turn their back on print?

It seems like it happened so fast, I must have missed it. I blinked, and the world of print was swirling down the drain when I looked back. Don’t get me wrong, the business isn’t dead, but it no longer thrives like it used to.

Even in the literary world, most people prefer to download their books in a second to their fire or Kobo or shlomba or whatever fancy reader comes out next, rather than go to the store to buy a freshly printed book and crack the spine for the first time.

Newspaper circulations are getting lower by the day, it seems. My family, for example, always got the paper, everyday without fail. One day, I went to get the paper and it wasn’t there.  We no longer subscribed, and I was baffled. Some once daily newspapers have made the move to online news during the week and only printing weekend newspapers to keep their papers alive.

I can’t help but wonder, is it all because of the Internet? The answer is yes. I actually really don’t have to wonder at all, its obvious. Why would you want to wait for the evening paper when instant updates can come to your phone. Breaking news is obtainable as it happens via Twitter and the rest of the Social platforms aren’t far behind, with Facebook now featuring trending topics, and Snapchat provides constant updates on their public stories.

People obtain their news in real time, with an endless stream of updates at their fingertips, and more up-to-date information than could possibly be contained in a newspaper. Evolving online journalism into a 140 character nightmare, where reporters send out poorly worded, typo riddled “news updates” as they race to win first place in the “get the news out first race” that they end up having to correct later as the story unfolds.

For now we can only stand by and watch as the world of journalism we know morphs into something new, doing our part to keep print alive by buying our local papers, and always, always double check anything we read on Twitter.