Viewpoint

viewpoint The Future of News Is on Screens, and Community Media Can Be a Part of It

The last battle of the War of 1812, the seizure of Fort Bowyer, in what is now Alabama, by the British, happened more than a month after the Treaty of Ghent ended the War of 1812. (The larger and more well-remembered Battle of New Orleans also ended before U.S. President James Madison ratified the same already-signed treaty.) In the 17th century, the battle of Prague continued nearly a week after the Peace of Westphalia ended the Thirty Years’ War in Europe. Multiple Japanese soldiers serving in World War II, perhaps most famously 2nd Lt. Hiroo Onoda in the Philippines, refused to surrender their combat posts in the South Pacific until as late as the 1970s. We can say what we like about the relative merits of printed newspapers and magazines versus their digital counterparts, but the proverbial writing is on the wall. Each day, a greater proportion of the billions of words read by people across the world are read from a screen rather than a page—and that trajectory will never reverse. Perhaps you are someone who enjoys the convenience of reading the New York Times on your iPad. Perhaps you are someone who insists on nothing less than the sensory experience of paper in your hands and the smell of ink as you catch up on current events. Perhaps your preferences and tolerances vis-à-vis the format of your media depend on the context, with some topics and settings well suited for screen reading and others seeming to call out for the timeless appeal of the printed word. But for media consumers, producers and advertisers to eschew the rise of digital distribution is to fight a battle long over. There are arguments for and against all media formats. Famed media scholar Neil Postman spent much of his celebrated (albeit contentious) academic career lamenting the rise of television, in part because he believed the printed word was fundamentally better suited for comprehensive mental processing and understanding of phenomena and partly because he was concerned about the commercial structure of television advertising. He

[ by james d. ivory, ph.d. ]

Healthy local media remain vital to the vibrancy of communities’ culture and business, but continue to be ever more threatened by the economics of the media landscape.

had similar concerns about the burgeoning use of the internet in the final decades of his life. But while there is room to lament aspects of the continued rise and dominance of digital media distribution, there is much to like. Digital publication allows relatively small organizations to share news and viewpoints with a broad audience without the scale of production needed to make physical print runs feasible. Digitally distributed news stories can integrate investigative journalistic writing seamlessly with citizen-submitted video. And advertisers can get a much more precise sense of how many members of their communities their messages are reaching. This flexibility becomes all the more valuable in a time where a worrying number of news organizations are seeing their budgets stanched as they pass between corporate owners. Healthy local media remain vital to the vibrancy of communities’ culture and business, but continue to be ever more threatened by the economics of the media landscape. News and opinion on screens is not simply an inevitability we must accept; these days, its effectiveness of digital distribution at community level may ensure the viability of local media. I have always loved a good book, spent many a morning before school soaking up the newspaper after my parents, and even beavered through the better part of an archaic World Book encyclopedia my parents snatched from a school library sale as a child. As a career academic at Virginia Tech, I have spent no small portion of my hours on Earth dwarfed by university library bookshelves. But just as horse-drawn carriages have faded from city streets and fewer and fewer households grab a sack of raw flour from the larder to start cooking supper, our media landscape has changed whether we like it or not. As a believer in the vital role of community media, I hope that we see our local news sources, advertisers and readers embrace digital editions of the community media that help tie our neighbors together.

James D. Ivory, Ph.D., is a professor and director of research and outreach in the School of Communication at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) in Blacksburg, VA. He holds a Doctorate of communication, a Master of Arts in communication and a Bachelor of Science in journalism. His research and teaching interests deal primarily with social dimensions of media technologies.

MORE THAN 14,000 JOBS AVAILABLE IN THE LOCAL HOSPITALITY INDUSTRY Go to the Virginia Beach Hotel Association website for a listing of vacancies:

virginiabeachhotelassociation.com/find-a-virginiabeach-hotel-job