Why Paper Is Eternal - Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press ...

the familiar form that gave them their name – on paper. Some already speak of
the medium in the past tense. “Who Killed the Newspaper?” asked the cover
of The Economist in August 2006. 4
More broadly, there is a sense in the culture, inchoate but unmistakable,
that all print media, including magazines and books, are careering toward
obsolescence. This is hardly a new idea. Since the advent of the computer in
the mid-twentieth century, futurists have been foretelling the death of paper-
based communication. So far the obituaries have all been wrong, or at least
premature. Time and again, advances in computer technology that were
supposed to make hard-copy media obsolete failed to do so. <strong>Paper</strong> lived on.
But with the rise of the Internet, the popularity of online media outlets,
and the proliferation of devices to conveniently access those outlets – personal
computers, cellphones, personal digital assistants, e-books, etc. – a paperless
media world often seems not just possible or likely but inevitable. After all, in
countless other ways paper already has either surrendered to the newer media
or is in rapid retreat. Most financial transactions that used to be conducted on
paper, from trading stocks to paying utility bills to filing tax returns, can now
be done online. The personal letter, which handily survived the advent of the
telephone, has been largely done in by email. Even libraries, those seeming
bastions of paper culture, are conspirators in paper’s demise. Most public and
university libraries long ago traded their card catalogs for electronic databases,
which means that in order to locate a paper source one must now go through a
non-paper gatekeeper. And the content of the libraries themselves has been
moving online, too, as librarians rush, often with outside partners such as
Google, to create digital doppelgangers of their holdings. More and more, a
2