Newspapers soon to be a thing of the past?

From Personal Computer World 14/03/08:

The younger generation of internet users are more likely to avoid traditional print media and get all their news online, according to research from comScore.

Meanwhile, heavy newspaper readers are more likely than average to engage with traditional print news brands online.

But the internet represents a significant opportunity to extend and improve existing news brands and reach out to new consumers with living, breathing, real-time content.

Just because print circulations are declining does not mean there are fewer news consumers. In fact, just the opposite is true.

For the past several years, I’ve relied increasingly heavily on the net to keep up to date with news. Save for the odd train journey, say, I never actually buy a hard copy newspaper now – and why would I? You can get the same content for free, faster, in a format that’s vastly superior, doesn’t degrade or get dog-eared and is readily searchable with a couple of keystrokes. As if that wasn’t enough, it’s eco-friendly and doesn’t leave your hands grubby with newsprint. So everyone’s a winner, right?

I suspect the majority of people in my age bracket have similar consumption habits for news and I think it’s clear that the world is fast heading towards an almost paper-free news delivery solution. As a consumer of news it’s an exciting time; there has never been such an array of choice for the delivery of news, nor has there ever been a faster service or greater convenience in obtaining it.

Nowadays on the net, news is everywhere, and in a whole manner of formats on an ever increasing amount of hardware. Of course, as well as sources relying on the written word, presenter-fronted and podcast formats are becoming just as ubiquitous on the internet, too. What with mobile computing growing at an alarming rate, it seems clear that the days of newsprint-stained fingers are definitely numbered.