N.B. – A US-based journalist sent an email to ask what I think “are the prospects of newspapers in the Philippines given today’s difficult economy and the public’s increasing dependence on the Internet for video-enhanced and quickly updated news.” He said that he has read my comments on the Pinoy Press article “Why the Philippine Press Is Too Careful in Handling Brian Gorrell Case” and my paper titled “The Practice of Online Journalism in the Philippines.”

All this talk about the demise of print as a result of new media is no different from past debates whether or not radio will be rendered obsolete as a result of the introduction of television. Remember the songs “Video Killed the Radio Star” by the Buggles and “Radio Ga-ga” by Queen? They reflected at that time the growing perception that radio will be gone in the near future. But we know now that this is not true.

You may argue that the global financial crisis makes the production of print publications impractical due to its high cost compared to creating, maintaining and developing websites. But there will always be an audience for print, in much the same way that there will be audiences for other forms of media.

The reason for this is very simple: All forms of media have their own attributes and consequent functionality to media consumers. Just to review what we know about communication and media theories, print has the attribute of permanence; radio, immediacy; television, audio-visual presentations; and new media, convergence.

While it is true that “convergence” makes it possible for the new media to combine the attributes of print and broadcast (TV and radio) – e.g., online journalism is even defined as the permanence of print with the immediacy of broadcast – the attribute of permanence in new media is still contingent on various factors like power supply, hardware and software components, running time of servers and reliability of Internet service providers. As you know, the permanence of print is hardly affected by external conditions as documents on paper, if effectively preserved, can survive for a very long time.

In the context of a Third World country like the Philippines where consumption of new media is not yet as ubiquitious compared to industrialized countries like the US, the so-called traditional media are expected to thrive and survive. The Filipino general public still relies on television for their sources of information, as may be gleaned from a survey conducted by Pulse Asia in 2004.