The Internet, over the course of the century, has changed not only the way the news is presented, but also how someone accesses it. Newspaper companies have started to shift their focus to more online, and it can be seen as beneficial for both sides.
For starters, it brings a wider audience to the news platform. For example, if you’re under 16, you couldn’t drive to wherever the local newspaper is being sold. But there’s probably at least some teenagers that are under 16 and have access to the websites/social media.
Which brings in the idea of social media. Millions of people create accounts on platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. It’s a good middle ground between posting the entire article on the platform and promoting the news site, due to the character limit. The newspaper could still post the link to the website via Twitter though.
However, even though there are multiple advantages for newspapers that go online, there are also some disadvantages. In a brief informational blog page about online newspapers, sometimes content will get left out. Whether that’s because it isn’t fully updated yet, or there’s just a lot of news coming out that day, it’s easy for something to get left out.
Even though the online edition may be easier to navigate through and access, there’s always the case of too many advertisements. It can be more money towards the website for the newspaper and more of an inconvenience for the viewer.
As for the viewers themselves, having the paper online is very accessible. They may not have the time to drive to the store and pick up a paper, but at some point during the day, they are possibly on their phone or computer.
It’s also very easy to update, as if something changes in the news during the day, it probably won’t change in the paper until the next day. But online, the update could happen almost immediately.
Most of the websites are free too, so as the viewer, there is no issue for the most part from a payment standpoint. However, some may have an exclusive payment option that grants access to articles that people don’t usually see if they browsed as they normally do.
With about 15 million viewers between the top 50 news websites each month*, it’s pretty safe to say that newspapers adding an online factor changes things for sure. With this, we can predict that the accessibility of this can only go up from here.
*=As of the 4th quarter of 2020
Journalism 2.0 