What Has the Internet Done to the Printing Press?

It seems that every time a great invention comes around, something else major comes along to overshadow it. When the VHS came out, people said TV would go out of business. Expensive CD prices led to sites like Bearshare and Kazaa. This led me to thinking, what have been the ramifications of the internet on the basic printing press?

I was at a recent newspaper conference and, in one of the sessions, an editor mentioned how everyone in the whole market was going for avenues to make money on the internet. He mentioned that blogging was becoming a key way for newspapers to make money. How do they do this?

Well, they have to pay all the writers and editors with something, and printing 50,000-100,000 papers every day, or weekly, or even monthly, can be an expensive proposition.

Which leads me to my main point: What were the ramifications of the internet, the single greatest invention of the last twenty years, on perhaps the greatest invention of all time, the printing press?

The internet allows people to send off letters without addressing them by hand and going through the process of emailing. You can type off a letter and get a response in a day or less. Information is moving faster than ever.

Back when the printing press was a new commodity it seemed that information was moving faster, too. Things like bibles were seeing print, even early novels, but what saw print the most were pamphlets and the soon-to-be newspapers. It was obvious the reasons; people wanted to know the news.

The internet has allowed for all new ways of transmitting information to occur. As stated, it makes everything faster.

I work for a small newspaper and even we have a site from which articles can be read. It isn't profitable, but many papers are looking at the big picture in that money can be made on the internet, and they don't have to use as much paper.

Still, there are a few generations of people who want there information to be taken in book or newspaper form. I for one rarely read the New York Times website, but I do like to check out the paper on occasion.

Will the newspaper and book fall? Will E-Books and websites end the print market? I think that's doubtful, as people will still want to see their material on a page, instead of staring at a screen. The internet may be one of the more important inventions in the last century, but I think the printing press had more ramifications behind it. The DVD did end the VHS, but the VHS didn't end the TV, because you couldn't watch a news program on a tape you rented from a store.

It's a good argument to have, as these things allow for the spreading of information at a faster rate.