Why we can't let print newspapers die

I was doomscrolling on LinkedIn at 1 am in the night as a panicstricken internshiphungry young adult often does when I first came across the opening at Sunday midday I applied thinking ldquoWhat are the chances I actually get itrdquo Chance happened to be on my side and I landed the job But I had mixed feelingsIn a family like mine reading a newspaper was a very important ritual Every morning my father used to read one highlighting all the articles he liked and leaving it on the dining table And every evening when I returned home from school I would read the articles he highlighted for me It was his way of telling me what is important in the world I grew up reading columns with my fatherrsquos little annotations around them highlighting and marking all the knowledge he thought I must possess to survive in this worldWhen I moved away from home I left this important ritual behind I am ashamed to admit it now but I had given up reading newspapers How dishonest would it bemdashto contribute to a product I donrsquot consume myself I consulted a professor whose words stuck with me ldquoEvery journalist should experience print once in their liferdquo I hardly knew what those words meant thenIn Akshita Maheshwarirsquos perspective print media has had the luxury of time It has been seasoned and crafted over many decades to become the product it is today and hence print will always respect its readerrsquos time PicAnurag AhireI come from the digital faction of news consumers News means now to usmdashwhatever is out there we need to know nowmdashright in the moment During a panel I attended recently a panellist said that in the old days people had the patience to wait for a newspaper the next day It made me think of how my peers and I had lost the ability to wait for news Instead we tend to chase it Our social media feeds are our sources of news One can often find themselves watching a cat video right after a Reel made about the ceasefire in Gaza There is no differentiation between entertainment and news and if there was we donrsquot have the patience to figure it outThis is when I realised that the digital medium had replaced the ldquoritualrdquo of reading a newspaper It is no longer something you wait for Instead it happens to you all the time Very few fathers will sit and annotate articles for their daughters today SighAs someone just entering the workforce I am often the youngest person in a team I am told a lot that time is the most important resource one can have and I am lucky to have so much of it This confused me because I have always thought of time in retrospect The people I have worked for have had so much time to perfect their craftmdashI cannot imagine how the time that I have yet to see is more valuable than the time they have already experiencedThatrsquos why I respect print so much Digital is new it is revolutionary even But print has had the luxury of time It has had decades after decades to bloom to be seasoned to be crafted to become the product it is today Print will always respect your time For print space is a limited resource Every word that goes into a newspaper is thought about a hundred times before it becomes something you read The fact that there is only so much that we can write sharpens our skills drives us to give our readers the best we can in the limited space we haveIn the times of the old printing presses like the Gutenberg press technology functioned by manually arranging individual metal letters into words and sentences on a lead plate inking the type with ink balls then placing a sheet of paper on top and applying pressure to press the ink onto the paper essentially stamping the words onto the paper There was no space to make changes once a paper was ldquoput to bedrdquo So journalists would have to write nearperfect copies and that too as quickly as possibleFacts were of paramount importance Newspapers were the only sources people had And once put down in the newspaper things couldnrsquot be taken back In fact one would often find the number of deaths reported in approximations For example writing ldquoover 500 deathsrdquo instead of ldquo523 deathsrdquo because by the time the newspaper reached the consumerrsquos hands numbers could have gone upThe days of the Gutenberg press may be long gone but the practices of the print journalist have all been passed down These codes of conduct have a trickledown effect and they have found their way to me Print has taught me integrity Nothing is worth risking your integrity I know now what my professor meant The code of conduct of print is the Bible that every journalist must possessSo for those reading this physically thank you for supporting us And those who are on the website go buy a newspaper tomorrow Believe me its makers will make it worth your while