Newspapers Have a Special Place in Communication

Newspapers have held a special place in the world of communication for a long time. After the first daily newspaper was published in Germany, daily newspapers started circulating in most Western countries throughout the 17oos and 1800s. The long history of newspapers makes it obvious that its format and layout is of big interest to everyone. For instance, the broad sheet is recognized and used all over the world. Recently, there have emerged online versions of the daily newspapers. Notably, even after early attempts in disseminating texts and graphics electronically, like the use of Tele-text, the first fully web dedicated website named The Palo Alto Weekly was hosted just recently in 1994. Ever since then, the number of digital newspapers has sharply increased and every newspaper bureau has its own digital platform.

To make the reader’s interaction with the online newspapers better, publishers have improved their design to make it have a recognizable outlook, just like the printed ones.

The content of the digital newspaper is normally fully interlinked with the product since the reporters are fully aware of how the digital platform works.

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While the reporters in the print newspapers are usually not aware of what goes inside the printing room, the content teams in the digital space are expected to be knowledgeable on search-engines, be receptive towards current or trending topics, drive the interactive elements of the sites and generally use the multimedia functions effectively. Notably, in print media, a journalist mainly focuses on the style of language used especially in the headlines.

However, a digital media person is concerned with the keywords used in the different news articles, the trending topics and their easier discovery by the users (Brock, 12). The rapid advancement of technology has enabled readers to use various internet enabled devices to read digital content. Some of these devices have small screen sizes, especially smart-phones.

The digital newspaper writers are therefore conscious of the attention spans of the readers. The print journalist has the freedom to write an elaborate article since they are easy to handle and have a lot of space. However, brevity in the digital platform is the key to attract and retain readers. Moreover, some crafty expressions that print newspaper readers find pleasurable may not have the same effect to digital readers. Also, Li (3) notes that the use of difficult vocabularies in digital media may not be conducive for content discovery since average users search for terms that are mainly used in spoken English. In fact, Miller and Ashley (9) explain that writers who shift from the print newspaper to the digital ones find it difficult to adapt their writing to simple words that are mainly used while speaking.