Digital is the way to go!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/nov/18/guardian-news-media-printing

This time I decided to use an article  from The Guardian, which actually concerns The Guardian newspaper and it's parent company Guardian News & Media.
In this article, it is shown that Guardian News & Media decided to make significant cuts to it's printing sector.

This obviously means that there will be layoffs and closures, in fact, they have stated that only the factories in Manchester and Stratford will be used in the future for printing. The article also emphasizes on their objective to go digital in the future. Although the Guardian is confident that printed Newspapers are still viable in the near future, it is made clear that the future of the Newspaper lies in the digital world.

Besides the cuts and layoffs, I believe there is a more important message in this article that applies to virtually any other written news outlet. It not only shows that the news is going digital, it shows that the news has to go digital in order for it to survive. This goes back to the documentary The End of Print and the debate/discussion we had in class.

The Guardian is not a small local Sunday Newspaper, it is a very respected Newspaper that is is trusted and read regularly by a large number of people. If a news outlet as important as the Guardian had to let go of print and jump into digital, then I strongly believe that this is the case for most of the other news outlets available. But hey, is this really an issue? Although digital platforms don't have the authentic feel of a physical newspaper, they are more practical in the way they are used.

So People grab your tablets, the end of print is near!

Fox News leading in Polls.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/onmedia/0911/Poll_More_prefer_Fox_News.html


This is an article from Politico that shows the results of a Poll done recently in the United States about News Channel preferences. I think is article is very interesting because as we know, different channels have different political affiliations and can greatly influence the views of the people, and that is especially crucial in politics because often times, this news channels will influence voters, thus they have a role to play in electing the leaders of a country.

In this case, the most popular cable channel was Fox News, owned by Newscorp, a Murdoch held corporation. Fox is known to have a very strong conservative right wing position. Although they do not want to admit it, it is very easily seen through there programs and the way the present the news, especially when it has to do with politics.

This is not just my personal view, a lot of analysts and intellectuals agree on the fact that Fox News is often misleading in the way the information is delivered, even the polls show that the people who believe wrong information usually watch Fox News. What is impressive here is that this shows that Television has a very strong reach and can influence people in making some serious decisions such as voting for the President. Television actually has an important role to play in important nationwide aspects. However the problem is that they do not need to be the best, they just need to be the most convincing, so marketing and communications techniques to be as persuasive as possible.

For me, this is a serious concern because I think that when interest is mixed with the News, it can lead to a disaster.