Print or Digital?

Is Generation Z (or Gen Z) really out and out rejecting hardcopies of things, like books, and opting for the digital versions or softcopies? Do they even read the newspaper, far less in print? I decided to ask schoolchildren from classes 9 to 12 and college students. I found that contrary to the popular perception, they actually often PREFER hardcopies to softcopies. In an impromptu debate, those who defended digital said that other than being environmentally friendly (trees don’t need to be chopped down just so that we can read) digital versions were comfortable to handle.

The print defenders however, outnumbered their opponents in terms of the strength of their arguments and the number of reasons why physical is better than virtual. These included, in a nutshell, ‘less distractions caused by pop-ups, videos, reels and ads which is a recurring irritant during scrolling; ‘not dependent on electricity or battery, which could go off at the most inopportune moment like in the middle of a reading, for instance’; ‘newspaper reports are more reliable than social media because digital “news” can be uploaded or even manipulated by anyone with access to the Internet, whereas the offline newspaper is fed only by trained reporters;and ‘one can simply place bookmarks inside the pages of a physical book but no such option exists for online reading’.

Advertisement

Last but not the least (and the one argument which made me realize that the proverbial “generation gap” between the old and the young is actually narrower than we think was the argument ‘We love the feel, fragrance and texture of freshly printed pages….we don’t get that from the digital’. Wow. When I asked our reporter to work on a story about this, I didn’t expect that he would find so many young people who said that they preferred “print” to digital. Read the story yourself and maybe you too will see that we underestimated the shelflife or print.

Clearly it’s not going away anywhere in a hurry. It is even more reassuring to discover, as I did, that there are teachers who are innovating new techniques to teach English and language skills using physical newspapers as well as digital versions. We are lucky to have a pioneering innovator of this teaching technique write a piece for us. Other articles that are sure to turn your Sunday into a day of riveting reading include a humor piece on the ‘real ruler’ of London’s 10 Downing Street, the official address of Britain’s Prime Ministers. The fascinating stories of Kolkata’s archaeological heritage are really worth digging into (puns intended) as are the articles on the severe threats to our environment and water systems caused by climate change and other factors.

Please do also read about, ‘Snan Yatra’, the day of Lord Jagannath’s journey into the cosmos to teach humans how to balance the realms of the spiritual and the physical. Sort of like the balance between the virtual and the physical editions of everything. One of the advantages that digital has over print, that I can think of, is that it does not need to go through a rigorous and expensive printing process. Printing presses have come a long way since its early days of typesetting, etc and the process today does make generous use of digital technology. However, it is still quite a cumbersome process. Though, admittedly, fascinating.

I visited our own printing press one day and watched our pages (created on computers on our office desks) take on the form of the broadsheet newspapers that would be served up door to door when day breaks. Printing of course is done at night and here again is an advantage that digital has – it can be created at any time of the day. Errors can be corrected. Damages done can be reversed. Print is, well, like being set in stone. Yet, when dusk descended and before dawn broke, and the printing was being done, I could only feel good that we have been blessed with the fortune of still having a physical newspaper. Many don’t have that luxury and have wrapped up.

The writer is Editor, Features Photos by Sounak Mukhopadhyay