Print media 'will stay on'

Dubai: So will online newspapers eventually spell the end of their printed counterparts? Not according to Sean Burns, online manager for gulfnews.com.

He sees a newspaper's website which hundreds of thousands of people log on to each month as complementary to its hard copy edition, offering extra ways for readers to interact with the paper.

"Newspapers offer a particular way of consuming news. You can sit down and read it in a very different way to how you would read news on a screen.

"Different people choose different mediums. Some people are very computer savvy and feel comfortable reading from a screen - they will choose to look at a website.

Attractions

"The website also gives them the chance to interact with the paper through, for example, online polls. These attract thousands of votes."

The news operations of many newspaper websites and their print editions are getting ever closer, with reporters producing regular updates for the web and some stories going online before they have been published in the print edition.

With innovations such as electronic paper, a portable page on which the newspaper can be read, the online and print versions could eventually merge completely.

Readers would have all the advantage of continuously updated pages coupled with the portability of a paper newspaper.

"News that is updated 24 hours a day will become necessary on a medium that can broadcast continually."

"You have to do it because people expect it and your readership is from all over the world and will be reading it at all times of the day," Burns said.

The convergence seen between newspapers and websites is being mirrored with other media forms, with websites now for example offering television or audio footage.

"They will eventually all become available on mobile devices, but I think the original media will continue to exist in parallel," he said.