2nd Article Assignment

       The first article was interesting to see how some newspaper organizations are moving over to digital. I think that how The Guardian is profiting more from digital newspapers now will start to become the trend for all papers when they convert over. Physical papers are not bad, but they are not as convenient. In today’s time, everything is about convenience and being able to get the news on your phone or tablet is just more convenient for most people than a physical newspaper. I think newspapers can do really well on phones just like tablets. Yes, they are smaller, but most people have adapted to viewing content on their small phones anyway, it won’t be a problem for most to start viewing the news on their phones too. I think it is important to also make the app experience nice and unique in order to draw people to it. While some people will use it regardless of unique features or not, to get a larger crowd using it, it will need to be different and stand out. It is also important that they choose what content to put on the app carefully. The digital audience is different than their print audience. They won’t prioritize the same things and it is important to cater to your audience. It will also be important to keep the app up to date and to make it a nice experience. If something is difficult to use, people will not want to use it.

       The second article was also interesting, but for a different reason. It was strange to see that somebody had been envisioning tablets becoming a bigger part of newspapers so long ago. While it took sometime to start to get there, he was right. I agree that while tablets can help save newspaper organizations, they are also inadvertently killing them. Digital newspapers aren’t saving newspaper organizations, but are replacing them. It was funny to me how close this guy was on the impacts of the coming digital age. The new digital age has definitely disrupted a lot of what newspapers were doing and have definitely hurt the physical newspaper industry. I definitely agree that this guy’s ideas where ahead of his time. Technology wasn’t as developed as it is today when this guy was coming up with these ideas for the digital newspaper and so it didn’t take hold like he was hoping. But, now with all the advancements in technology we’ve had, his dream is much more possible and desirable to many today. I do think that smart phones are going to play a bigger role than tablets now because they are more convenient to people. Almost everyone has a phone and carries it with them everywhere. They are just more convenient than carrying a tablet all around with you. I do think that this pandemic will cause changes to the newspaper industry, though for good or bad I don’t know. With this pandemic happening, it just shows how important a digital newspaper can be and I think it will only become more important as time goes on.