Paperless newspapers

Dr. Sandagomi Coperahewa launched three books on the recent history of Newspapers in Sri lanka and about the giants who developed and kept alive our newspapers. The books are 'Sinhala Puwathpath Kalawe Purogamiyo', 'Sinhala Puwathpath Kalawe Metha Itihasaya', 'Martin Wickramasinghe Puwthpath Kala Mehewara'. He mentions that Newspapers were the only medium available for our people to learn about contemporary society and current events before the advent of the radio.

The non-print media entered the field with the radio first, then television and today the Internet via computers and hand held devices. Dr. Coperahewa, in an interview with Dinamina on Nov. 21st, 2012, had expressed his confidence that whatever technological advances come in the non-print media, the newspaper will never lose its place in society.

We have to agree with Dr. Sandagomi Coperahewa, that no other media could ever replace the newspaper. But we have to accept the fact that the form of the newspaper could change, that the newspaper printed on paper may not be able to survive for long.

Sketch of Daily News e-paper

It has already begun. On October 18th, 2012, Newsweek announced that the last print edition in the United States will be the December 31st issue. The transition to an all-digital format will be completed in early 2013. They claim that Newsweek's online and e-reader content has built a rapidly growing audience through the hand held electronic reading devices, because the use of tablets have increased to 70 million, up from 13 million two years ago.

Man could adapt himself to live in a mud hut, abandoning the cave, then live in a brick built house, a two storied country house, and today move into a compact apartment of a high-rise building. Man could adapt himself from eating raw fruit and vegetables to raw putrid meat to roasted food, and then to cooked food and move on to ready-to-eat frozen food. Man could adapt himself to write on an ola leaf with a stylus, then with pen and ink, with a fountain pen to move onto the ballpoint, then a keypad and now back again to writing with a finger or a stylus on a touch screen.

Yet at every change man would have grumbled, complained that the new way was not acceptable. That they would never give up the old ways. It is the same with the technological progress from a clay tablet to an electronic tablet.

Long ago announcements were made by inscribing on stone slabs, then by drummers going around the country. Then came the newspapers, which at first were published once a week, then a mid week paper and next came the daily papers, followed by an afternoon or evening edition. Yet very often the news was stale, because it could have taken a day or two, and sometimes a month or two if the news had to come by ship from Europe. When there was more important news a mid-day paper came out.

Today almost every newspaper runs an online service for breaking-news. The Sri Lankan diaspora reads all our papers on-line from Japan to Canada, and sometimes they read them before us, because we have to wait for the delivery of the printed paper.

Our parents used to keep newspaper cuttings, filed away carefully. If they missed an article, they had no way of finding it again unless they went to the newspaper office and searched their archives. Today all newspapers have their online archives, where we can access any old paper, or we can save it in our own folders.

According to Boswell, while spending a long time reviewing the contents of a library, Samuel Johnson had explained himself, "Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it."

Had he lived today Johnson need not have spent his time in the dusty library, instead he could have surfed the net. The way all knowledge in the universe is getting accumulated in digital format, and the way most knowledge is been made available freely to anyone, the day would come when man has to depend almost totally on digital media.

Dr. Coperahewa need not spend long hours at the National Archives and the university libraries searching for old documents, because our National Archives has launched a program to digitize all the documents in their collections, which we hope would be made accessible by anyone from anywhere.

When reading an e-newspaper, even if we are not doing any serious research on any particular subject, one article would provide links to other articles on the same subject, and there will also be hyperlinks through which we can jump to find more information on any word or phrase used in the article.

The website "www.newseum.org" provides access to the front pages of over 800 daily newspapers from around the world, which we could never be able to read in print, even if we can arrange with the publishers to deliver to us by the fastest available services. Our access is not limited to the front page, because through this page we can link to the website of the newspaper and read the entire paper. "www.onlinenewspapers.com" provides links to 51 Sri Lankan newspapers, and nearly 500 Indian papers, both printed and digital, while also letting us read most of the newspapers from almost all other countries.

Let us accept the inevitable. Today let us get used to reading the newspaper on the screen of our mobile phone as we go to work, and tomorrow we can listen to someone reading the newspaper to us, in a pleasant voice, while we are driving, working, or relaxing on the beach.

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