Editor's note: In the wave of digitalization, bad news from the paper media keeps coming. A few days ago, the British "Guardian" said that it would reduce its printing business; Newsweek of the United States announced that it would stop publishing the print edition and launch the digital edition from 20 13. This has once again triggered a controversy about whether the traditional paper media will die out. To this end, this newspaper invited two scholars to conduct in-depth discussions. It is the 24th issue of "Fighting for the Front" column jointly opened by Shanghai Oriental Youth Association and this newspaper.
Innovative paper media will last forever.
Lei Qili
● As long as human beings still need spiritual commitment and ideological inheritance, the future of paper media is still there.
● "Newsweek" wants to die, and there is no reason to let the whole paper media "bury".
● Traditional paper media should strive for innovation, adhere to responsibilities and ideals, and truly be invincible.
"If we stop this kind of printed newspaper with ink and pulp as the carrier and bearing the history, it will be a national disaster. You can't restore the contents of newsprint online. The internet is full of pornography and nonsense. We need to see wisdom in the newsstand. We need to meditate with a newspaper in the subway. "
A few days ago, after learning that the Guardian, an old British media with a history of nearly 60 years, will reduce its printing business, London Mayor Boris Johnson wrote an article to defend the existence value of traditional media. Boris Johnson's remarks are particularly intriguing when Newsweek in the United States announced that it would stop publishing the paper print edition from next year 1 month and release the digital edition instead, which once again triggered the discussion on whether the traditional paper media would die out.
Thoughts are endless, and paper media will never die.
When many people discuss the replacement of paper media by online media, it is proved by the balance between the number of users and economic benefits. Today, the development momentum, profitability and various statistical data of the Internet will definitely give its supporters strong support. However, we have to ask, is it too biased to measure the existence of a media only by whether it is profitable, how much it is profitable, whether anyone is using it and how many people are using it? Man's "instrumental rationality" has reached this point, and he is really an "economic animal". I dare ask, what is the ideal, responsibility and responsibility of the media? What is the historical consciousness that carries the progress of human thought?
A simple historical fact is that tens of thousands of years ago, our ancestors used a rope to record things, but even in the initial pioneering period, words and writing were not just composed of numbers. The appearance of hieroglyphics not only represents the object it describes, but also contains rich ideas, emotions and other image-related meanings. The invention of variant forms was originally related to the recording of human sacrifices, divination and works of art. The invention and application of block printing in the early Tang Dynasty was to print Buddhist scriptures. /kloc-In the middle of the 0/5th century, Gutenberg and others invented metal movable type printing, which originally printed the Bible. The spread of The Book of Songs and Songs of the South is not for profit. In the long history of thousands of years, from the invention of paper to the progress of printing technology, paper printing has always been closely related to human thought and spiritual activities. The emergence of large-scale mechanical printing and paper media, the emergence and spread of modern ideas, and the emergence and formation of modern nation-state complement each other. This also tells us that the traditional paper media is a commodity, but it is not an ordinary commodity, but a materialized carrier of thought and spirit. Today, human thought and spiritual activities have been deeply bound by economy, development, money and figures, but it would be short-sighted to say that the light of thought and culture has been obscured and the mission of paper media carrying thought and culture has ended. In this sense, as long as human beings still have realistic needs of staring (not browsing), reading and thinking, as well as spiritual commitment and ideological inheritance, the future of paper media will still exist.
The human mind is infinite, and the paper media on the earth will never die out.
The content is Wang's pursuit of change and innovation.
Needless to say, the traditional paper media has encountered great difficulties under the pressure of emerging online media. But this dilemma does not lie in external challenges, but more because of the lack of creativity in their own thoughts and culture. Take Newsweek as an example, it is about to be changed into a digital version. Even without the emergence of emerging online media, paper media like Newsweek are actually going downhill. Many years ago, Newsweek had a serious crisis because of its rigid positioning, outdated style and poor management. Two years ago, it had to be handed over to Harman Group by Washington Post at a symbolic price of one dollar. Since then, it has fallen deeper and deeper into the mire of continuous decline, so that Tina Brown, the last editor-in-chief and experienced in media production, tried to add some content to this old magazine to cater to the market taste, but she was unable to turn the tide.
From this perspective, the demise of the paper Newsweek is by no means an event that can be equated with the inevitable demise of the paper media. "Content is king" is the first determinant of all media, including paper media and emerging online media. Similarly, The Economist's circulation in Britain has been increasing, and the circulation of each issue has exceeded 6,543.8+0.4 million. Before the global financial crisis broke out, The Economist predicted that its readers would probably increase as the crisis intensified. Why? Because in difficult times, people need ideas more. Economics is actually political economy, which Marx has already revealed. The Economist flies against the wind, which just proves the law of "content is king" from another side: because it can provide clear situation analysis, clear position and suggestions to solve problems, The Economist can grow against the trend under the dual pressure of the rise of the Internet and the global financial crisis and become a flagpole of traditional paper media.
Of course, in today's bad news of the paper media, there is a problem with the paper media, and it is a big problem. The essence of the problem is that capital invades too much, so that the paper media is too commercialized. Thought and culture are diluted by excess pulp, and the dignity of thought and culture is submerged by money and figures. Books that have not reached the academic level are published in large numbers, and information with no value and significance is everywhere. In the endless process of commercialization, the paper media has destroyed itself. Victor Nawaski, a journalism professor at Columbia University in the United States, analyzed that Newsweek was in trouble not because it stuck to the old news traditions and founding purposes, but because it abandoned these traditions and purposes in its heyday. Newsweek's "death" has no reason to let the whole paper media "be buried".
The historical characteristics of paper media and human spiritual thoughts, as well as the inherent natural defects of emerging online media, are doomed to the fact that traditional paper media and emerging online media are not simple substitutes. The emerging online media not only embodies its advantages of immediacy, interactivity and convenience, but also deeply exposes its negative characteristics such as "overload", fragmentation and lack of authority. Therefore, Nicholas Carr, the author of Shallow, said, "If we use the Internet instead of memory, … we will risk being hollowed out". This is not an alarmist.
Finally, traditional paper media will not die because of the rise of the Internet, which does not mean that traditional media can sit on the Diaoyutai of the bright moon. On the contrary, the traditional paper media at this time, in particular, should seek change and innovation, stick to their own history and commitment, and strive for their own responsibilities and ideals, so as to be truly invincible.
(The author is vice president, professor and doctoral supervisor of School of Communication, East China Normal University)
Paper mass media will eventually die out.
Deng Jianguo
● In the market economy, business logic dominates the operation of mass media organizations.
"Personal feelings for paper" is different from "rational business decision of mass media organizations"
The existence of paper in life is different from that of mass media.
In fact, the decision-makers of Newsweek have been faced with a choice: stick to the paper version or turn to the electronic version in an all-round way.
Now, we already know the decision of Newsweek. It's like what a tough killer usually says when he points a gun at the victim's head in a police film: "This is just for business, not for personal."
Mass media is business first.
"Commerce" was the "axis principle" of journalism when "Yellow News" was rampant a century ago, and it was later hidden in the slogan of "theory of social responsibility". Today, under the relentless pressure of new media, it finally comes out again. Under the guidance of this principle, if it can bring benefits to the media, it should use paper; If it can't bring benefits, it will be abandoned.
A century ago, William Rudolph Hearst turned a paper newspaper that everyone thought was unprofitable into a mass media that could win huge profits. He believes that the main purpose of newspapers is not to publish news at all, but to publish advertisements to make profits. News is the bait, and advertising is the purpose. Newspapers "fill the pages with advertisements before filling the blanks with news, not the other way around". As for the social responsibility and public interest pursued by the newspaper industry later, it was just a gesture made by the newspaper industry to public opinion after "yellow news" destroyed the world trend and caused public outrage.
Paper cost has always been a key factor in the input-output calculation of mass newspaper industry. 144 1 year, German metal worker Gutenberg invented lead printing. 1605 The earliest newspaper in the world appeared in Strasbourg, Germany. However, due to the limitation of high paper cost and low reading level of the public, it was not until the beginning of the 20th century that commercial mass newspapers appeared. How hard-won paper is can be seen from the following historical facts: until 1776, the court in Massachusetts, North America passed legislation requiring that each residential area must set up a special person to collect rags that can be used for papermaking; In order to save paper, until 18 18, English newspapers with a printing area of more than 22×32 feet will be punished, which is almost exactly the size of The New York Times now; At that time, Americans tried hard to find cheap raw materials for papermaking, and tried marijuana, pine cones, potatoes, asbestos and so on. Once, paper makers brought a whole ship full of mummies from Egypt, and removed the linen wrapped on it to make paper. 1840s, the machine specially used for mass production of plant fiber pulp finally appeared, the price of paper began to drop, and the high-speed printing machine came out at the same time, which made the so-called "pennypaper" possible. As a business model, mass newspapers came into being.
The history of newspaper development shows that in the market economy, business logic has always dominated the operation of mass media organizations, not others. Although paper media may still exist in people's daily life for a long time, mass media organizations operate on the principle of profit-seeking, paying attention to the return on investment and considering life and death. Today, in the production cost of newspapers, paper still accounts for 60%-70%, and the high profits of newspapers in those years are no longer beautiful. If paper has become a burden rather than a profit, the media will cut or simply eliminate paper. What's the fuss about?
A specious reason for optimism
However, as a bystander, many people still don't understand this. They are still stubbornly optimistic about the future of paper media as a mass media. Here, we distinguish the reasons behind this attitude.
First, some people point out from the perspective of the development history of media technology that the old media has never been completely replaced by the new media in history, so newspapers will certainly not be replaced. This is an inductive method of "inferring the future from history", which ignores two factors, that is, as the "king of media" that can "swallow up" all previous media types (books, newspapers, magazines, radio and television), the Internet has an unprecedented "revolutionary". Television has not replaced books, newspapers, magazines and radio, which does not mean that the Internet cannot replace these media, not to mention that we are talking about paper that can be easily replaced.
Secondly, some people think that although paper may not continue to exist as a mass media, it will still exist because the demand for paper will still be small. There is no doubt that the minority needs paper media (old books and works of art, etc.). ) will still exist for a long time. But, first of all, the paper media that such a small group of people need is not the paper media as mass media. Newspapers that meet the needs of such a small group have been divorced from its news media attributes and have nothing to do with the "future of paper mass media" we are discussing now. Secondly, even if the demand of these minority groups is large enough, media organizations will be cautious to invest in such areas because the growth of these areas is limited.
Third, some people think that "people are nostalgic animals", and there will always be people who insist on using paper media because of nostalgia, so paper will still exist as a mass media. This is a kind of emotional interference with rational judgment. The so-called "emotion" has never occupied any position in the commercial decision-making of the media, and readers will not continue to choose to use a certain media just because of a certain feeling. Moreover, our nostalgia for paper may be because we happen to be a generation that spans paper and electronic media. I want to ask, there is basically no memory of the "pre-Internet era" after 90. Will they miss it? When our cross-border generations are old, will our future generations miss the paper age? The answer is obviously "no".
Fourthly, some people think that many people in China are just literate, "and at least half of the population have never subscribed to newspapers or even read them. If every family in China can subscribe to newspapers for at least one year, it will mean several times the distribution potential of the newspaper industry. ". The implication is that paper newspapers can sit back and relax for decades. This view seems very convincing, but it embodies a linear development view of media usage habits, that is, people always use paper newspapers first, then television, internet and so on. However, before the current diversification of media choices, it is entirely possible for new literate groups to cross newspapers and directly use electronic media with lower threshold and obvious oral characteristics. Just look at whether the floating population uses mobile phones and the Internet more or paper media more, and the results will be clear at a glance.
To sum up, if we distinguish between "the existence of paper in people's daily life" and "the existence of paper as a mass media medium", and distinguish between "people's feelings for paper at the individual level" and "the rational business decision of mass media institutions", it is not difficult for us to draw the conclusion that "paper mass media will eventually die out".
Concerns about paper media are born with the development of new media. After the so-called new media, which is based on numbers and spreads information through the Internet, appeared widely, many people thought that the paper media had a bad prospect. It is predicted that in 50 years, paper documents will be withdrawn from the historical stage in major countries. 100 years later, people will only see paper documents in museums. [1] (69) Some people assert that the network culture formed by the combination of the Internet and mobile phones does have the super ability to catch all the nets. Although the situation that network culture "covers all cultural forms" has not yet begun, it exists objectively and is independent of human will. [2]( 150) These views coincide with the speculation of some western experts on media development. Is the paper media really going to die? In the present and future of intense network communication, does paper media still have its own living space? This needs serious consideration. Because it is related to our cultural construction.
one
From the Eastern Jin Dynasty when paper basically replaced bamboo slips to the appearance of new media at the end of last century, paper media has always been the most important information carrier in the history of communication. In this long historical process, the paper media has already surpassed the most basic communication function of the media, but has built people's spiritual sentiment and aesthetic taste with its particularity, which has influenced people's survival and life and is closely related to human beings.
Scholars like their own study best, and books are essential no matter how they are arranged. The book shelf after shelf is the personal companion and spiritual life of the owner of the study. "If nothing disturbs the mind, people should always sit alone in the study, recite to the sun, or read by candlelight at night, enjoy a quiet life in the study and get a kind of happiness from learning." [3] (136) What is said here seems to have some ancient flavor, but so do modern people. Now, people's living conditions have improved, and many people have their own learning. Even those wealthy businessmen should create a space to put beautifully bound and expensive books. In order to study, it is still arty.
Books can certainly transmit knowledge, but reading without practical utilitarian purpose is not only to acquire knowledge, but out of habit, to value the fun contained in reading itself. The trees in front of the flowers and the grass by the lake are all good places to study. "Or on a snowy night, a person is sitting by the fire and the pot on the stove is ringing. There is a bag of good tobacco next to him. A person took a dozen books on philosophy, economics, poetry anthology, biography and the like, piled them on the sofa, rummaged through a few casually, and calmly took one that caught his interest at that time. " [4]( 107) This is the pleasure of reading written by Lin Yutang; Yu Guangzhong talked about his interest in the art form of books with great interest: "Most bookworms both read and play with books. Reading is the content of reading, and playing with books is the way of playing with books ... a beautifully printed book with a gorgeous cover is a beautiful existence in itself. After buying so many English books, especially the colorful pocket edition series, I fell in love with the colorful and unique covers at first sight, which is often a big reason ... Senior bookworms generally have incurable diseases. They like to sit at their desks. They don't have to read books or study problems. They just like to touch this one, flip through that one, take photos of the cover, look at illustrations and catalogues, and smell the strange smell of paper and ink (especially new books). In this way, an expensive afternoon was used up. " [5]( 133)
The spirit and hobby of reading and enjoying books are not just people's external life, but have formed habits and personalities and internalized people's life. That is, it is not only a way of behavior, but also an artistic existence. However, once a certain behavior forms a habit and addiction, it is difficult or even impossible to change when it is integrated with people's inner spiritual world and aesthetic taste. Although new media has developed rapidly, it also has many advantages that paper media does not have. However, it is almost impossible, at least more difficult, for a reader to get the happiness he gets from paper media from the Internet and electronic publications. We can't imagine that there is only one computer and a stack of CDs in the study; What is even more unimaginable is that a scholar operates a modern reader while drinking tea and smoking. It is not that this situation is impossible, but that people's aesthetic interests and reading habits are difficult to change.
China's cultural tradition has always emphasized artistic life, while western Renye Fang advocates poetic dwelling. Go to the bookstore, buy a favorite book, stamp it casually, look at the light for a while before going to bed, and put it on the sofa beside the bed after going to bed. What a beautiful and peaceful realm. It's hard to imagine what life in the world would be like without paper books and periodicals.
Many people think that almost all people who are studying now are middle-aged and elderly people over 40 and 50. Decades later, these people are gone, and there is no room for paper media to survive. This judgment is somewhat simple. Don't say that traditions and habits will not die with people's death. Take teenagers nowadays, don't they read paper books? Although they have been exposed to new media since primary school or even before school, they are also users of paper books and periodicals, and are also influenced by their grandparents and parents who like paper media. They live in an era where old and new media coexist. Statistics show that two-thirds of French book readers are under the age of 35. This shows that despite entering the Internet age, French teenagers still like paper media. [6] Although China teenagers' reading space is occupied by new media, it is unrealistic to say that they have been isolated from the paper media.
two
The characteristics of new media as a communication medium are obvious, such as flexibility, simplicity, intuition, rich information, rapid spread, unrestricted by time and space, two-way interaction between transmission and reception, and so on. Therefore, defenders of paper media often interpret the corresponding characteristics of paper media and defend their own views. In fact, this comparison is of little significance, because it does not involve the essence of the problem. It's like a fairy tale of a camel and a sheep. Finally, height has its advantages, and short has its advantages. Therefore, let's put aside the contrast between the old and new media for the time being, and first look at the influence of the new media on people's lives.
It is an indisputable fact that new media is the product of highly developed science and technology. It is precisely because it is another success of human beings in transforming the world and the embodiment of human strength that people give it high praise. Not only does it think that it is an epoch-making revolution in the history of cultural communication, but it also thinks that it embodies people's overcoming of contingency, can enhance people's autonomy and personality, and even thinks that it helps people realize freedom and equality to some extent. This view only sees one side of things and ignores the other side.
It goes without saying that any technology is a double-edged sword today. Milan Kundera mentioned the European human crisis that Husserl was worried about in a famous speech in the mid-1930s in The Defamed Legacy of Cervantes. Husserl believes that the root of the crisis did not originate at that time, but was seen in the early modern times. "They are the one-sidedness of Galileo, Descartes and European science. These sciences simplify the world into a simple object of technical and arithmetic exploration, and exclude the concrete world he calls the life world from their sight. " [7](25 1) Milan Kundera not only relayed Husserl's point of view, but also believed that "the climax of science pushed mankind into the tunnel of various professional disciplines. The deeper he knows about himself, the less he can see the whole world and himself, so he falls into the fence. " [7](25 1-252)
Husserl and Kundera's words may contain a broader space and time, but it is just right to observe the relationship between new media and people. The world of life is a complex dynamic existence, which seems to be a noisy space and a dusty field for thousands of years. It is impossible to sort it out, understand it one by one, and play it for human beings, because that is the world of life. People's happiness or mission is to devote ourselves to it, to think and explore the known and unknown, past and present, time and space, ephemeral and eternal, so as to enrich the world and ourselves. Among them, experience and inquiry are the best ways to survive. However, the new media has reduced the reproduction of life to a screen.
New media has its own communication characteristics: network language subverts the traditional poetic narrative mode of paper media and adopts new technology to express words; Web pages are often filled with simple and intuitive image information; Complex social and historical reality is decomposed into isolated events; Local information transmission is holographic substitution; The interactive mode of communication and acceptance makes criticism lose its settling time and become an instant discourse. This simplified, flat and patterned communication-lifestyle is called "reduction" by Kundera, and it is the same kind of media as the new media that realizes the function of "reduction": "These things are spokesmen for unifying the history of the earth, and they expand and guide the process of reduction; They distribute the largest number of simplified and old-fashioned things acceptable to all people and all mankind to the whole world. " [7](262) Thus, in the embrace of new media, people become lazy, obedient, mediocre, unthinking, and indifferent to the fate of themselves and mankind. People's spirituality is covered by the clutches of the media.
What about the paper media?
Compared with the holographic, fast propagation, large storage capacity, interactive communication and high technology content of new media, paper media does lack some modern advantages. However, it is the lack of this advantage that gives it an advantage that new media does not have. The purpose of new media is to attract audiences. To some extent, grandstanding is not an exaggeration. Even if it is an original web text, it is hard not to think of the other end of the network when typing-the mode of real-time interaction determines the utility and superficiality of writing. But the real paper writing is not like this. Is a personalized behavior, from the depths of the soul. What it wants to reveal is the history, reality and thoughts of individuals and human beings-a profound thing with essential significance and the guardian of poetic existence, and in the process of revealing and guarding, it makes itself and others experience the pain and happiness of survival. He is not in front of a narrow screen, but in the three-dimensional time and space of history, reality and future; What it pursues is not instant noise, but eternity, loneliness and massiness, and provides these to its audience. Up to now, some paper writers still instinctively reject online media, and even deliberately let their writing avoid secular disturbances and find a quiet and remote place, all in order to keep their soul, distance, poetry and life.
Do people still need loneliness, loneliness, pain and anger? In today's era of flat thinking and shallow life, this question is likely to be considered extreme and alternative, but the answer is yes. American Jewish philosopher and theologian Herschel once said: "People should retire and live in seclusion in order to listen. Solitude is a necessary resistance to the intrusion and fright of social hysteria and a stage of treatment and rehabilitation. " [8] (41) Just like most people are willing to live a mediocre, calm and wandering life, some people refuse to give up their insistence on some opposite things, such as loneliness, pain, thinking and adventure. Because they are also the needs of life and accord with human nature. These are not what new media can provide. The shortage of new media provides conditions for the future survival of paper media.
Some people may say, aren't there fewer and fewer people studying in recent years? Yes, according to relevant data, the number of people reading paper media has indeed decreased year by year in recent years, and even turned into a serious social problem. But objectively speaking, this is not the reason why the paper media is called "paper", and it is not that readers who quit or don't look at the paper media have gone to the network. There is also the quality of the paper media itself. For many years, our creative atmosphere, academic atmosphere and publishing atmosphere can't be said to be very positive. Writers pursue fashion and grandstanding, and the books and periodicals compiled are either shallow and vulgar, empty or difficult to understand. To some extent, it is deeply influenced by mass media, and even reduced to mass media; The publishing department also stinks of copper. The decline in the number of readers in paper media shows that readers are dissatisfied with and contradict the information in mass media.
We don't deny the superiority of new media and its impact on paper media, and it is a huge and lasting impact. However, there is no convincing basis to assert that traditional paper media will eventually be replaced by new media. The relationship between paper media and human flesh and blood proves this. The fundamental task of our time is not to make the media replace each other, but to make the media obey the needs of human survival. After all, the media is just a tool to convey information.
References:
China com