E-Newspapers and E-News Services in the Electronic Age: an Appraisal
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Annals of Library and Information Studies Vol. 58, March 2011, pp. 55-62 E-newspapers and e-news services in the electronic age: an appraisal K. C. Panda 1 and Dillip K Swain 2 1Dean (Faculty of Arts), Professor& Head, PG Department of Library and Information Science, Sambalpur University, Jyotivihar, Burla-768019, Sambalpur, Odisha, E-mail: [email protected] 2Assistant Librarian, Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology University, Bhubaneswar-751024, Odisha, E-mail: [email protected] Attempts to make the user community aware of e-news and e-news services offered by different e-news channels all around the world. Provides a brief discussion of history and developments of e-news services, newspaper websites and latent advantages of e-news in the electronic era. Employs literature survey method to unfold the latest trends of e-news industry and finds that, though e-news services provide immense opportunity to the readers and simultaneous access at infinite points and reading at ones convenience, still a few key technical challenges like, navigational support, hyper linking, and designing of e-newspapers needs to be properly taken care of and tackled with. Concludes with the recommendation that information professionals should take steps to increase the usage of e-newspapers by their intended audience. Introduction • E-news via e-devices – is an electronic newspaper service supported by e-paper A newspaper plays an important role in disseminating technology (i.e. an e-reader, such as Amazon current information and events and keeps its readers Kindle), e.g. Hindustan Times on Kindle up-to-date. The electronic newspaper or e-newspaper is a self-contained, reusable and refreshable version of By the late 1990s the availability of news via 24-hour a traditional newspaper that acquires and holds television channels and then the Internet posed an information electronically. Moreover, electronic ongoing challenge to the business model of most newspapers retrieve information electronically from newspapers in developed countries. Paid circulation online databases, process it electronically with word has declined, while advertising revenue — which processors, desktop publishing packages and a variety makes up the bulk of most newspapers’ income — of more technical hardware and software, and has been shifting from print to the new media, transmit it electronically to the end-users 1. Broadly resulting in a general decline in profits. Many speaking, e-news items which evolve from ‘online newspapers around the world launched online editions newspaper’, ‘PDF newspaper’, and ‘e-news via e- in an attempt to follow or stay ahead of their devices’ may not be taken synonymously since they audience. However, in the rest of the world, cheaper are different from each other in terms of printing and distribution, increased literacy, the developments and use. In order to avoid the growing middle class and other factors have more than compensated for the emergence of electronic confusion, the terms that are perceived little 2 differently may be described as: media and newspapers continue to grow . • Online newspaper/web newspaper – Online With the advent of the Internet, web-based editions of the newspapers available on the web, “newspapers” have also started as online-only with special characteristics such as navigation publications. For example, the Southport Reporter support, advertisement, and style of presenting the published from UK is the only web-based newspaper, news, e.g., The Hindu , The New Indian Express which does not have any connection to hard-copy formats. Moreover, the introduction of online editions • PDF newspaper - electronic replicas of the of newspapers has considerably affected the traditional newspapers, e.g., wikinews 56 ANN. LIB. INF. STU., MARCH 2011 circulation of newspapers in their hard forms. hyperlinks, feedback and visual cues. Flavian and Gurrea 9 identified the main motivations that influence Literature review readers to read newspapers and the result of their Some of the experimental studies conducted on the study confirmed that readers motivated by aspects viability of electronic newspapers by the research related mainly to differential attributes of the Internet scholars from different parts of the world are worthy versus traditional channels perceive them both as of examination. In the aforesaid direction, Bains 3 in information conduits and not as substitutive products. his paper highlighted the development of electronic In another paper, Flavian and Gurrea 10 underlined the news production and predicted that electronic news growing importance of the electronic medium in the could replace ink on paper, but only when something work place, and particularly for the newspaper better than a PC screen comes into widespread use. business and analyzed the users’ behaviour and Dimmick et al 4 in their study found that the Internet attitude towards the digital press. has a competitive displacement effect on traditional The present paper intends to deal with some basic media in the daily news domain with the largest facets of e-news services that can help sharpen the displacements occurring for television and perception of information professionals and users’ newspapers. Ihlstrom et al 5 in their paper presented community regarding e-newspapers and e-news the future scenario of use and design of the e- services. newspaper. They addressed several issues like navigation, pagination, structure and overview of e- newspapers. Yijun and Liwen 6 studied the web Objectives of the study visibility of national newspapers from USA ( USA The study keeps the following objectives in its ambit Today The Globe and Mail ), Canada ( ), China of discussion: (People's Daily ) as well as Hong Kong ( Sing Tao Daily ) through link analysis and found that The Globe • To look into the comparative details of e- and Mail seemed to have a larger international reach newspapers with that of conventional newspapers; than USA Today . Neither newspaper website attracted • To explore the potential merits of e-news links from China or from pages in the Chinese services available all around the globe; language. Outside China, People's Daily , an official Chinese Government newspaper, is not as visible as • To discuss the pros and cons of e-news channels; Hong Kong based Sing Tao Daily . USA Today and • To reveal various possible modes of accessing e- The Globe and Mail were used more for news citing or reprinting purposes while People's Daily seemed to newspapers; and be used more as a research resource. It provided an • To make the users’ community aware of latent indirect view of the online readership. Ola and Ojo 7 advantages of e-news and e-news services. vividly discussed how the old newspapers can be made PDF and channelized online. The paper Methodology discussed traditional ways of managing newspaper resources and the need to device a new medium of The present study is a theoretical exploration that accessing the information contents of the resource. employs the methodology of literature survey. Latest The necessary news items were downloaded and literature collected on the topic of e-news and e-news imported into IFAnet database which was created services have been comprehended in order to assess using Microsoft Access. The versatility of the the important trends of e-news industry and the mode software for hosting the Information and the Network of e-news services offered at different parts of the (IFAnet) data was examined through searches made world. The authors too have given some impetus to using different parameters and search engines. this burning topic through the exercise of their Svensson and Hakerod 8 in their paper explored how personal experiences and knowledge. the navigational support in an e-newspaper should be designed to support the users’ task oriented reading Brief history and development behaviour and the study subsequently generated six guidelines which covered information structure, The birth of the electronic newspaper can be traced back to the early 1970s and the development of PANDA & SWAIN: E-NEWSPAPERS AND E-NEWS SERVICES IN THE ELECTRONIC AGE: AN APPRAISAL 57 teletext, a one-way text display. In 1979, the first that have been delivering remarkable e-news services videotext system, Prestel, was launched, which over last several years. The rapid growth of e- incorporated graphics and allowed interaction. The newspapers during the late 1990s was driven not just 1990s, however, have seen a renaissance in electronic by the belief that this was the market to get into, but newspaper development. At the start of the 1990s, also by the fact that the technological means to do so there was only one electronic newspaper in existence, was readily available. The establishment of new the Star- Telegraph. By 1994, 40 electronic business practices, however, must have more to them newspapers were found only in USA 11 and today, than the satisfaction of some technical urge 13 . there has been a tremendous growth in number of e- However, the question remains how well the e- newspapers around the world. newspaper industry will survive when the source of collecting revenue from the customers has not yet Internet technology, in the way it accesses and been guaranteed. Nevertheless, there has been a presents information, is changing the rules of news growing popularity for online news and it is presumed publishing and distribution in many ways. The that sooner or later, a flexible price mechanism may challenge posed by the Internet for the news industry follow the mounting popularity of concerned e-news could mean a radical re-thinking of business paper unlike some popular priced e-databases. strategies, production practices and presentation formats with implications for the economics of new publishing 12 and there has been a paradigm shift in the A few news-oriented websites market of e-newspapers congruent with readers’ preference and choice for electronic information and All electronic newspapers have launched their entertainment sources to that of their printed respective websites for the access to varied contents counterparts.