For the better part of the last century, newspapers were one of the primary methods of receiving news, both nationally and from around the globe. A low asking price mixed with plenty of reading space made newspapers instantly popular among the population, and people quickly turned to them as their main source of news.
Newspapers are very much still around, despite the fact that more people than ever before have access to the internet and the countless news websites that are accessible and often free. So, it begs the question: in an age where news is accessible, costs nothing, and is available on just about any smart device imaginable, why are newspapers still popular?
Old Traditions
The Baby Boomers are the generation that primarily grew up reading newspapers, and it’s one of the main reasons that most forms of physical media have maintained their popularity. People like to be able to pick up and read a physical newspaper, especially in a generation that is not nearly as tech savvy as the younger generations.
While there are plenty in the Gen-X and Millennial generations that prefer their media in newspaper form, by far the main target audience is the Boomers. As the Boomers continue to age and digital media becomes more dominant, we will see whether the physical newspaper dies out completely or not, but for the time being it retains a large audience across much of the world.
Newspapers Tend To Be More Authentic
This is certainly not true of every newspaper in the world, but the majority of journalists that write for newspapers tend to put a lot more effort into writing quality pieces with more fact checking.
A big part of this is time pressure – everyone has access to news sites at any given moment, which means that there’s a lot more pressure to break the news at quickly as possible. This time pressure also removes a lot of the journalistic integrity that’s important for reporting quality and truthful news, and there may be a lot of omissions and biases found in fast, digital media.
Newspapers Offer A Single News Source
Another reason that so many people prefer newspapers is because they provide a means of obtaining all of one’s news from a single place.
With all the different news websites that are available, it’s very easy to become overwhelmed; there’s so much information to sift through that it’s generally just easier to shut the browser down and go out and find a newspaper instead, unless it’s news on the latest video game review or ICC World Cup betting strategies.
All the most important news that a person needs is all in one place, it’s cheap, and it can be used for a variety of different uses, such as composting. While it might not mean instant access to the latest news, it does provide a much more palatable means of consuming that same news at a later stage.
