|
ALDOUS Huxley’s classic view of the future of mankind under
science and technology is a brave new world. This is the same world
faced today by newspapers under threat from new media and
technology. Ingo Woelk, a media analyst, writing for the manroland
Messenger, a print industry newspaper, summed up the new challenge
as follows:
“At a time where masses of people publish
their own essays on global politics and home improvement through the
internet and senior citizens become power buyers and sellers on
shopping sites, it can safely be said that the media scene have been
substantially altered…”
That what used to be MAN Roland, a major German
industrial (diesel engines and printing machinery) giant, has become
simply manroland reflects its contemporary stance. To continue:
“Media users are out of control and media is
out to chase after current trends. Or is it perhaps the other way
around? Who picks the issues and who sets the trends? And how do
newspapers with their limited interactive capacities stand their
ground in this rapid development?” After radio, television, how
much time is left for newspapers in the daily media race for
attention?
A German survey on how much time people spend
with media has shown that “every German between 14 and 49 years of
age spends eight hours a day with media, 90 minutes more than in
1999.” The growth is due to TV (+14 minutes), radio (+29 minutes)
but mainly the Internet, which gained 32 minutes.
Broken down, the times spent with media today in
the survey shows, radio, 2 hours, 54 minutes; television, 2 hours,
40 minutes; Internet, 41 minutes; newspapers, 23 minutes; and
magazines, 16 minutes. The manroland analyst asks:
“Does the lower share of time given to
newspapers as a medium indicate a loss of importance and a lower
opinion-forming role? Which medium contributes in which way to the
selection of topics and what is the role of newspapers in this
context?
“Newspapers are still associated with
trustworthiness, thorough research and background information. They
are indispensable for creating a sustained image and other media
sources still cite newspaper reports with good reason. The
newspapers provide the Internet with contents for feeding content
management systems. However, the Internet weighs topics differently,
creating new topics and priorities with its speed, tickers and
photojournalism. The variety of media and the increased competition
associated with it have changed the appearance of news. Do the media
impose its news structure on people or does it merely respond to
media’s changed habits? As is often the case, the truth probably
lies somewhere in between. There is an interaction between media and
its recipients within the scope of a changing globalizing world. The
media is becoming progressively less capable of carrying out
one-sided agenda setting. Quite unexpectedly, polar bears turn into
media stars and citizens flatly ignore populist political
opinion-making efforts. In short, recipients have become more
empowered.”
In the Philippines, getting the news ahead of
the opposition is not the major objective. Outside Metro Manila,
major newspapers are delivered to sales outlets at the same time by
one contractor. So the quality of content and presentation counts
for much.
Speed of production may not be crucial but new
technologies that cut costs at the same time as it cuts production
costs would be a major development. And this may be achieved by the
new CTP (computer to plate) technology.
The classic breakthrough in newspaper production
was the introduction of the rotary press, where newspapers are
printed from rolls of paper and automatically collated and cut. The
next breakthrough was when offset technology was merged with the
rotary press to produce quality printing in color.
Most newspapers today are put together in a
computer. The computer then produces a camera-ready printout, which
is photographed then printed in a sensitized metal plate. After the
image on the plate is developed, this is used in printing the paper
in a rotary press.
The new technology eliminates the photographing
process and the use of film. The image of the newspaper page is
directly transferred to the printing plate by the computer. The
saving in film, plate handlers and time is significant enough to
amortize the cost of the new equipment over a short period.
And since the printing of a newspaper takes up
only a fraction of its regular “working” hours, the new
technology allows the use of the newspaper press for
commercial-printing jobs, thus providing additional revenue.
Printing jobs made up in a computer may be
stored in diskettes or DVDs and printed directly from these,
eliminating further checking or proofreading. In fact today, many
printing plants in the country already use CTP technology for
commercial jobs.
opinion@manilatimes.net
|
