Newspapers and Magazines

Most newspapers and magazines were platforms open to all for discussion on various topics. A culture of shared humanity and diverse ideas was promoted through the print media in years elapsed. Diverse views increased the impact of print media in the past. Core principles of media were freedom, fairness and equality for itself as well as its writers and readers.

Print media now need to become compatible with digital developments. Newspapers and magazines should become digitally accessible and accommodating to readers and writers. Developments in media have been taking place for centuries. One type of media supports the other types. It is odd to say that print media cannot function well because of electronic or social media.

Any media progresses by becoming more and more accessible to its readers, audience and users. When a media is limits its accessibility for small gains, it is wasting opportunities of making progress. An open and equal accessibility is good for media. Sometimes print media attaches more importance to advertisements. Advertisements are good business but not the basis of the business of print media which are its readers and writers.

Newspapers and magazines were beacons of freedom and equality in the past. Strangely, in the digital age, newspapers and magazines have reduced the freedom and equality available to readers and writers. Limited pages are made available for a reader browsing a newspaper’s website. Needless formalities are devised to discourage writers wishing to be published in the columns of a newspaper. In this age of freedom it is not productive. Newspapers and magazines are discouraging readers and writers to see towards the publications for knowledge, and obtain it from social media websites or somewhere else. It is reducing the circulation of newspapers and magazines. Readers who read newspapers online also purchase it. When newspapers do not make pages available online it often affects the readership of the newspaper negatively. 

In this age of marketing and business competition print media is wasting opportunities of gaining readers and writers through the social media and the Internet. No wonder many newspapers and magazines have closed. Newspapers have limited not only availability of pages for readers but also have limited the writers who can write in newspaper columns. New writers are not provided with opportunities to write.

By: Ashraf Naushahi

(Educator, Writer, Book-Reviewer, Specialist in English Literature, Translator)