Believe me! this is the future of journalism
Months ago I was delighted to attend the Arab Media Forum in Kuwait as It is an important media gathering, which provides a renewed dialogue about this profession since 14 years ago till today.
I was a guest of a seminar discussing the relationship between printed press and online journalism, at that time I had been convinced that we should not see this relationship as a deadly battle between two tribes, or two armies, but rather as a story of natural evolution, faced by a cultural challenge in the first place.
The Panic of change?
And yes! that was what I said that morning in that neat hall in The Regency Hotel, and I still see the whole problem as a cultural, spiritual and anti-modernization conflict, it is the chronic Arab fear of change! It is the sense that change will undermine our Arab identity, Therefore, those problems must be harshly addressed whatever the cost.
In the case of printed press versus the online journalism , I think it's much simpler question, it’s Evolution.
Without the natural evolution of writing, and its tools, this article would have been written on the wall of a cave or on a trunk of a tree. In contrast, I’m writing it on an electronic tablet blinking with elegancy as a true witness on the huge development of the human mind and in the evolution of life in general.
We live to change and renew our lives day after day, and when we lose the ability to change we lose the ability to live.
Natural elements are always driven by moral decay in favor of other elements, thus only the human mind remains eager to change. who would have believed that centuries ago the world war was about salt, spices, and tea? These elements have mobilized armies, and have overthrown. But nowadays those same goods which caused war are of irrelevancy.
Don’t we see how Gulf and global countries are preparing for the post-oil era, even though it was the main element that derived our lives and our world for more over a century!
When natural elements end up morally, what remains is the human mind, which is an essential element in the industry of change.
This movement of change must also cast a shadow over the crucial profession: the journalism .
One-day printed press will be like salt and spices, and perhaps like oil, a story that we will narrate to our children, while the electronic press will prevail and develop. The world's press began as a way to tell stories, now the news has shrunk, and the paper news will end.
That’s because of the strong competition from television, radio and communication, thus journalism requires a renewal of the spirit of the work, the used language, and it’s means.
The printed press will die but we should not die with it. There was the time when the information was linked to the newspaper that we started with it our morning, our world has changed a lot. We became part of the news industry, and in some cases the news reaches us before it’s publication on official newspaper!
As a person who has worked in the online journalism for more than a decade, I say that websites will also disappear. Yes, will disappear. The future is for tablets, media applications, graphics, and what creative ideas might emerge and develop out of these means.
Time changes, and man and the press still have the ability to renew themselves always.
Why?
Because we stay, the unrevised version of history!
