Vital Statistics
It is true that newspaper circulation in America is on the decline. But they are rising in Australia. And in India ! A look at the 47th periodic report of the Registrar of Newspapers in India (RNI) will show how un-founded the fears are for the Indian print medium. The 47th annual report (for the period 2002-03) indicates that newspaper circulation has collectively soared up to over 1.4 billion copies. Everyday !

And these circulation figures assume further significance when you look at year-on-year growth - these figures represent a 24 % increase over the previous reporting period January - December 2001 (1.15 billion copies).

The Medium Is The Message
Everybody knows that foreign investors are ready to swoop on the country's print medium - as soon as the government announces 'glasnost' for the print area. Would these august commercial bodies pour their good money into an enterprise that has no future? Ask yourself why the advertising industry continues to patronize print media on par with electronic. It was feared that print advertising would go down to a combination of television and online media. But the truth is that although television commands its share of the pie, and online advertising budgets continue to creep up, they did not kill the print medium - in fact, they highlighted the speciality of the print medium.

From time immemorial, material progress and intellectual growth have been based on the printed/written word. This is reason enough to believe why the abiding spell of the print media over its audience will survive the challenges of the electronic media (television, Internet and IP TV).

Even after the contents of books in major libraries have been digitized, libraries have not disappeared. Teaching throughout the campuses in the world continues to be mainly through books and papers. Just as the written/printed word has not replaced the spoken word as the most popular medium of communication, so also the electronic media are expected to co-exist with the print medium.

Just as Marshall ("the medium is the message") McLuhan had prophesied.

Effects of New Technology
All new technologies have an inevitable polarizing effect.

For example, classification of society into literate and illiterate can be traced to the proliferation of printing technology. (In fact, literacy has traditionally been identified with the printed word.)

Likewise, the recent "business process outsourcing" industry has created new social structures in India. And the Internet as a communication medium, had led to a different kind of social stratification (computer elite class) in the 90s.

However, new technology rarely completely replaces the previous technology. Most of the time, it supplements the earlier technology. For example, it may be the transient nature of the messages on TV and radio that drives audiences to look for corroboration in print media. And CDs & DVDs have not replaced video tapes. Nor did audio cassettes diminish the enthusiasm of music lovers to flock to classic music concerts. (In this respect, it is worth noting that the truly revolutionary email technology has still not completely replaced traditional mail !)

Print : On the Rebound
The World Association of Newspapers provides fresh evidence of the near-immortality of newspapers. The figures for developing countries point to dramatic increases in print media circulations. The latest Shaping the Future of Newspapers (SFN) report from the association says, "Circulation is up in Australia. (Print) advertising is back in Japan. And newspapers' long struggle on the Internet is finally paying off in the USA. The newspaper industry is on the rebound worldwide."

In the Indian situation, apprehensions regarding print media's future are hardly tenable. Take the current economics of access : print medium has a clear advantage over the Internet. There is today hardly any average household that does not buy and read a newspaper. On the other hand, to browse contents on the net, one has either to own a computer or go to an Internet café to pay and browse. Instead, it is cheaper and easier to buy a newspaper.

The minute a newspaper is in your hands you can navigate its contents in seconds. You can freely and swiftly swing between its pages. The freedom of portable, foldable paper and established user-friendly layouts cannot be matched by Internet site navigation.

The newspaper's unmatched portability and (to-date) penetration is difficult to beat. More than one person cannot share a computer simultaneously, while 4 readers can read separate pages of a newspaper. Not surprisingly, computer users have not stopped buying newspaper en masse !

Complementary
No two media can be rivals in the true sense of the word. This is especially true for the print and electronic media. Not only because all major newspapers have online editions, but also because of their complete dependence on computers for their production process. And while news on the Internet appears "as it happens", not everybody stays glued to a monitor (24x7) just to check what is happening in the world !

Print & electronic media do complement each other. In fact, the correct perspective should be one of Internet and print media rather than Internet vs. print media.