I think I have this somewhat weird obsession with print media, that for whatever reason compells me to fight for it anytime the topic is brought up. It’s not even like I’m an avid newspaper reader, I just feel that print is something so trivial to society that it can never go away.

It’s not a secret, media is what defines a human being’s life. The influence it has on a person varies from what one might think is an important topic, to the latest fashions and diets. And I know that new technologies make life easier and seem to satisfy the instant gratification fix that we crave these days, but I still don’t think print will ever be replaced.

Surprisingly, I found that a lot of people believe that at some point print will die. Some extremetist even question the fact of not IF it’s going to die but WHEN it’s going to die.

So the answer to the question, “Is print dead?” is no, it’s not. Even after reading argumentative articles about how if it’s not dead already then when will it be, I can’t help but still feel confident that it’s here to stay.

And if in the future I turn out to be wrong, I’ll be the first to admit it… but when have I ever been wrong???

I know that as a child I was enthralled with the mixture of sounds and video clips on the Web. It was like pure magic.

Nowadays I can see that, although it may have negative affects to journalism, multimedia really adds to journalistic writing. Take backpack journalists, for example. They have to rely mostly on multimedia in order for their stories to have any appeal to them and for them to get all the facts accurately, since they’re reporting and writing stories so quickly.

Even in the ancient days of 2002, Jane Stevens noted that her video camera was her reporter’s notebook and that in a few years backpack journalists will rule the journalism world.

And to date, Stevens is right. Backpack journalism has taken off. Mojos are popping up all over the place and it’s starting to become natural to see their stories regularly.

Preston Mendenhall went from being MSNBC.com’s International and Editor based in London, to a traveling journalist who reported on the Iraq war mainly from the battlefields themselves and used his own film, edits and writings for print, TV and online media.

He’s a classic case of multimedia being part of the solution.

It’s my generation, I guess, that makes me so pro-multimedia. It’s what I’ve grown up with and I’ve seen how successful it can be. To me, multimedia comes with the territory of being a successful journalist.

Then, after flipping through the “pages” (or tabs), I caught onto what was going on. It was a joke. Of course I knew it wasn’t accurate as soon as I saw the date (July 4, 2009) and the top headline “Iraq War Ends,” but what I wasn’t understanding was why anyone would take time out of their day to write this, possibly copyright infringing, fake newspaper.

Not only was the content highly unrealistic, but it was also extremely biased. Firstly, I hope that print media is NEVER that left-winged. Secondly, I noticed a comment on one of the pages simply stating, “Copyright infringement” so I immediately started searching the pseudo-newspaper for any permission to use the original NY Times layout.

There was nothing at the bottom of the page, where I usually look for copyrights. The only thing I saw was “Copyleft.” To me, this Web site is clearly trying to make a statement… well point taken! But what I want to know is, legally, can they do that? And even people are saying this spoof paper will be a collector’s item? Puh-lease!  It’s not real!

Not only does the fake newspaper look faulty but it associates the nytimes-se.com version with the real version. It’s kind of like associative linking.

Basically, looking at the spoof newspaper not only put me in an irritated mood, but it made me feel sorry for the real NY Times. I wonder if they’re as irritated as me?

To start off with, I think that just having some basic knowledge in learning how to use HTML coding and making your own Web site can be an advantage for anyone, not just a journalist. There’s tons of do-it-yourself learning modules that break down how to learn the material in an easy way. In a clearly Weinberger point of view, the Web is taking over the world, so familiarizing yourself in the basic knowledge of it would be smart.

Now that being said, the basic knowledge I’m learning in this class (plus some design courses that I plan on taking) is the furthest I want to educate myself in Web skills. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great thing to know, but for me, I’m really just not that good at it. For example, it took me about three hours to do a simple HTML coding assignment. Like the old saying goes, I guess everyone has their strong points.

Mine just happens to be something other than Web skills, and I’m OK with that.

Seriously, the Web is making our in depth story time seem more like a scanning sort-of-get-what-the-author-is-saying time. So what do I have to say about that?

Firstly, scanning news stories, blogs, anything for that matter, on the Web is not nearly as fun as actually having the physical piece of paper in my hands. Also, when reading print, like the newspaper, I don’t feel rushed. There’s something about the presence of the Web that makes me feel like I have way too much information in front of me for me to casually read an article.

Secondly, and I’m being completely serious, the computer hurts my eyes. And I’m not the only one. Many people suffer from this discomfort and although not serious, it is annoying and it really hurts! According to CNN’s Health/Library, I experience all of the symptoms for eyestrain and there are ways of fixing it, but who wants to go through all of that trouble just to read? Now I’ve tried reading books on the Internet, but after three pages I had to quit. I like the old-fashioned paper that doesn’t illuminate an artificial light back in my face when I read it.

Third, and lastly, I agree with Nicholas Carr. He said that the Web is not only changing the way we read, it’s flat out changing our brains. Carr talks about how it’s changing many regions of the brain, including those that govern such essential cognitive functions as memory and the interpretation of visual and auditory stimuli. That’s intense.

Don’t get me wrong, I do appreciate technology, but the Web is changing the way people read.

For now, I think people aren’t realizing it as much, but for someone like me, it’s evident every time I read online. In fact, my eyes are hurting just thinking about it.

Blogging is definitely on the uprise, and print journalists are starting to get pushed to the side. Although I don’t think print journalism will ever die (obviously, I already touched on that subject in a previous post), I do think that things will go downhill for print journalism if it doesn’t pick up on a few things.

Scott Karp, a blogger, offers great insight on why journalists should start their own blog. And he’s not the only one. Literally, hundreds of bloggers, even traditional journalists, offer advice and opinions on why journalists should start blogging.

So I think the answer to the question, “What can journalists learn from bloggers?” is easy. They can simply learn to blog.

Like Roy Greenslade said, people are forming cyber communities in which they converse endlessly about their interests, and this makes traditional journalists suspicious because they can’t imagine such a profound change from traditional media. And to make matters even more complicated, journalists point out that there is no perfect example of journalists and bloggers working in harmony. So where do journalists start?

I say start with the blog. If traditional journalists can make that first step, I think they can learn a lot from bloggers, retain their existing audiences and gain new ones. Like I said before, it’s the cool new thing to do, so why not jump on the bandwagon?

Recently in an ethics class, I was introduced to Jim West, the mayor of Spokane, Wash.  In 2005, he had been accused of not only living a double life, but of molesting young boys in the 1970s.  Now, according to a documentary by Frontline, the reporter who wrote about West was not only unethical in his research, but he also wrongly accused West of molestation, which in response, damaged his reputation.

This brings me to historical record.  Since when is it OK to publish something that is clearly a personal conversation between two consenting adults?  When is it OK to publish something that is off the record?  In my opinion, NEVER.  Like Elizabeth Zwerling said, “Easy access to online news archives is one of the Web’s amazing benefits for journalists,” but at the same time I can’t help but think of it as a curse.

Although Jim West is now dead, he died in 2006 from colon cancer, his tarnished reputation pops up anytime anyone searches his name on the Web.  For Zwerling, she knows the repercussions that come from quoting someone that thought it was “off the record.”  Like I said before, the Web, journalism and the historical record can definitely be a curse.

Paul McAfee, director of interactive operations at the Press Enterprise newspaper in Riverside, Calif., said “he hopes the visibility and permanence of the online record will make journalists take their job of getting it right more seriously than ever.”

I hope so too.

There will never be a time where people will decide once and for all that the use of print media is pointless. Look at all the “have nots” that we’ve learned about this week. I didn’t know so many people were untouched, pure, Web virgins.

When one student talked about his friend being so desensitized by the Web that he said nothing would disturb him, he was right. This day in age people, especially in my generation, aren’t scared of anything on the Internet because they’ve seen it all, but then again not all people are this exposed to the Web.

Unlike this hardcore grandma, my grandma, a classic have not, does not like technology. I know for a fact that she would call me a crazy, stupid, foolish girl if I told her that she should read her favorite newspaper online from now on because print media is going extinct. It would hurt her fragile eyes way too much. Plus, how is she supposed to navigate around on the Internet?

Like we are spaceships says, “Unless paper is sometime outlawed in the future, I don’t think print will ever die.” It’s true. Without print, where are the have nots going to get their information from?

Now if it came down to it, I think I would survive without print media, but grams and gramps wouldn’t. I think it’s safe to say that print will never die, and if it does, I know a lot of people that will go down with it.

To me, this is community.

The flag in the middle of our town was lowered to half staff and people that didn’t even know what he looked like attended his funeral. But it went far beyond the city he grew up in. Gov. Schwarzenegger released a statement commending Travis as a hero and even capitol flags were flown at half staff.

Communities are broad and most likely if you belong to one, then you belong to others as well. And they come in different forms, like ones on the Internet. As we all know, online communities offer a series of emotions. In a recent report by John Horrigan, it was found that some 84 percent of Internet users have at one point contacted an online group.

Now what I want to know is what kind of online group we are talking about here. Sure I’m down for some social networking sites and even job-related social networking sites like PROpenMic.com, but getting involved with a community where I have to portray myself as something I’m not just in hopes of being liked, is ludicrous.

And online dating sites? Can you say sketchy?

Some bloggers even say that most online communities (even job-related ones) are doomed to fail.

I don’t know about you, but I think I’m going to stick to the “real” communities. You know, the ones that support a fallen war hero WITHOUT having to be a part of an online support group.

I can’t even think about what I would do if I couldn’t log onto Facebook 20 times a day or check up on the latest news stories that rock the Internet world.

If this is just how I’m feeling, what would other people do?

I’m no where near as technologically dependent as some people and businesses. I can’t even count the number of hits that came up when I typed “who is most dependent of the internet?” in my favorite search engine. My point is, the U.S. (the world for that matter) has become almost completely dependent on the Internet, so much so that print media is quickly becoming a thing of the past.

if there were to be an Internet failure, what would people do? Even a slight glitch in a Web site that temporarily sent a popular browser to the unknown world of “Internet failure” caused major problems… and that was just TEMPORARY.

Apparently I’m not the only 20-something that thinks her life would be over without the wonderful Web. According to a popular Web site for college students, some people call having no internet a “threat” and say things like “Without the Internet, I would be nothing!”

When I think of how pathetic I am for feeling emotionally attached to something so lifeless, I like to look up other people’s lives who are more pathetic… using the Internet of course.