Monday, November 06, 2006
Seares: Death of newspapers
By Pachico A. Seares
News Sense
AT A recent seminar for GMA-dySS news reporters, Ma. Jane Carabuena-Paredes, journalism icon, lawyer, and smart Smart executive, discussed broadcast basics.
In the same forum, where radio-TV superstars Mike Enriquez and Bobby Nalzaro pep-talked reporters on how to push competition to cliff edge, I distinguished broadcast strengths from print weaknesses, which led to the issue on the future of newspapers.
I said, Can you, with a TV set, hide your face at the breakfast table from an irate wife who let you in at 4 a.m.? And, as print people dare broadcasters, try swatting a fly with a laptop.
They predicted newspapers’ death decades ago.
At an Asian editors forum in Tagaytay in late ‘80s, where doomsayers sounded the same death knell, Sun.Star chairman of the board Sonny Garcia asked: Compare leisurely scanning of the day’s paper over coffee with reading news on computer screen.
Digital divide
Ah, but digital divide keeps narrowing. Maybe not in two decades, what with the gap between foreign technology and habits and ours, but the knock on the door is inevitable.
Better be prepared, says Sun.Star managing editor for news Isolde D. Amante.
Being caught with one’s pants, or skirts, down is never pretty. And skip funerals. Give me weddings anytime.
Newspapers never die. Newspaper content and form change but its soul, the people who breathe life into each issue, endure.
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (November 6, 2006 issue)
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