A recent article in USA Today discusses the propensity for college newspapers to switch to a predominantly digital medium of publication. Our own editor-in-chief Kaz Komolafe was quoted as saying that college readers are “seeing their news online through Twitter and Facebook so what we wanted to do was give them the news where they wanted to read it.”
I admit that much of my inspiration for my writing now comes from Twitter. In fact, the aforementioned USA Today article came to my attention through Twitter. But I feel there is something disconcerting about the way this, and other news analysis, portrays our generation — that we are tech-happy, losing the sentimentality of print and demanding that the medium of news change to meet our demands of rapidity and convenience.
The end of the USA Today article qualifies that though college newspapers have been shifting toward digital media, they are also the publications most likely to remain attached to print culture. Dan Reimold, advisor to The Minaret, the student newspaper at the University of Tampa, said this nostalgia for the traditional medium is “a little deeper than everyone’s first impression, which is that students are ignorant or are buying into the romance of print.”
“The romance of print” — is that the charge of the critics? It seems as though our generation has found itself in a catch-22. We are criticized for being stuck in our smartphones, addicted to technology, forgetting how to communicate. But when it comes to student journalism, we are pressured to “keep up with the times,” to leave behind anachronisms like print papers that are no longer practical — that is, no longer profitable.
As much as I took issue with The Cavalier Daily’s semiweekly publication redesign, I now realize the change may have been necessary to contend with the decline in the revenue from print advertising. But I still take issue with the stereotypes — the stratification of generations, and the conflicts that make us feel guilty about loving print in a time that it is dying, for fear that we may be set apart from our peers, for fear that we may be branded “romantics.”
Well I, for one, have no shame in being a romantic.
Let’s start breaking down these stereotypes. To the people who believe my generation can only read in digital form, talk to the students in my English class: the girl who said that she reads nothing — not even news articles or Collab assignments — off a computer screen, and the group that reached a consensus that Kindles are terrible, that they cannot compare to the satisfaction of turning the pages of a book.
And to those people who might think that we are merely ignorant romantics: think about the true value of print, how it enhances the way we feel, the way we remember, the way we come closer together. As an English major, I may be biased in saying that we lovers of literature can sympathize most with the relationship between the heart and the page, but you don’t have to be a literary academic to gain insight from novels, poetry and plays. We readers remember the ways in which the print medium enhances our greatest works of literature, their plots and their characters. We remember the climax of a Jane Austen novel, in which the protagonist finds a note from a former fiancé surreptitiously left on the desk; we empathize with the feelings of the young heroine, share her suspense as we read the words she reads — “you pierce my soul … I have loved none but you.” Imagine receiving that message in a text or an email. It doesn’t measure up.
We readers remember the emotions evoked from the words created on the page, and the words destroyed on the page. In Emily Brontë’s “Wuthering Heights,” we grieve as Catherine and Linton’s love letters burn in the fireplace. Had Nelly Dean taken young Cathy’s iPhone and deleted her text messages, the sentiment would not have been as powerful — nay, it would not have been there at all. There is no emotion in looking at a screen and hearing that mechanical raindrop sound, as you watch the disappearance of something which you could never feel in the first place, could never touch, could never imagine your lover touching.
Yes, these novels have romantic qualities, but we love them because they reflect real emotions, real grievances, real resolutions of life. We love our print newspapers because they conjure real emotions within us, as we turn the pages to reveal a story, an op-ed — arranged in columns like the pillars of a coliseum, the text standing powerfully, saying, “Here I am.”
Print as a medium may be dying, but as a principle, it will always be preserved in our literature, and in our memories. My generation is not afraid or ashamed to defend print as an integral part of human culture, as it will remain for the rest of our lives.
Katherine Ripley is an Opinion editor. She can be reached at k.ripley@cavalierdaily.com.
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