by Audrey Levine

Created on: October 02, 2009

The world is changing and, with it, so is the way people gather news. Where, for a long time, people relied on the daily newspaper, read over a cup of coffee and a morning bagel, now it is simply easier to grab a handheld device and connect to the Internet while going about an everyday routine.

And to accommodate these changes, more and more of the news is being uploaded directly to Web sites, complete with additional features like blogs, videos, audio clips and interactive forums. This is all well and good, and actually a welcome addition to assist in spreading news and informing the public about breaking stories and additional facts that cannot be printed in a newspaper.

But should newspapers go fully digital for the future?

Absolutely not (and I don't just say this as a newspaper reporter concerned about her future).

I do not think digital newspapers need to completely replace the paper versions for longevity, I rather believe the online news should simply be a supplement. I happen to think the actual newspaper will never die out - its history is too great and long to ignore, and somehow I feel there will always be people, young or old, looking to have a paper version available, something tangible they can hold in their hands.

But I do see the benefits of a digital supplement. With the weekly newspapers I write for, we can only fit so many articles in it each week. Between the stories that are time-sensitive and other feature pieces that would be of interest to our readers, we often don't have room to fit the smaller stories that could attract fewer readers. Yet that doesn't make them any less important. With the Internet as a supplement to the paper version, we can publish all articles no matter how much space is in the newspaper itself. In addition, we can print longer versions of the stories if pieces had to be cut for space.

Plus, of course, there is the added bonus of having the additional material that could never be printed in a newspaper, like videos and audio clips. And the Internet allows people to make comments on articles and have discussions about the pieces that were written, which provides more avenues to get readers involved.

None of this changes the fact that I believe newspapers themselves will never die. Looking at the practical side of the matter, the Internet does not always work. I know this seems blatantly obvious, but there are times when a connection doesn't work and people are cut off from the digital material. In those instances alone, having the newspaper itself would be a benefit to ensure that the news can still be read and passed on to those looking for information.

I frankly think it would be a cop-out for those who care about the business of newspapers to fully abandon it just to make everything digital. There is room in the world for both the paper versions and the online ones, we just have to understand that one is merely a supplement of the other.

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