Internet Surfing

Introduction

With the incessant change in this world, people's attitude towards newspaper reading is not the same. There was a time when newspaper reigned the news medium in America. Faded black and white movies attest to how family members at breakfast tables read sections of the newspaper, which was as much a part of the meal. Then there was the evening newspaper, too. In subsequent years, newspapers faced competition from radio and, later, television. Now online news threatens the venerable medium. Not wanting to fall behind, newspapers (as well as other news media) have responded by going online, reproducing their print media products on the World Wide Web with little regard for the different ways audiences may read and process offline and online news (Li, 2002; Thalhimer, 1994).

Discussion

People's attitude towards newspaper reading has changed. Like any other change, this change also has reasoning behind it. People are moving towards online news. Realizing this change, almost every American newspaper company has developed its website where they provide the same information as in their actual newspaper. Despite the same news, people of this era prefer reading the news online. An experimental study of American college students' knowledge of international news reported that even short-term exposure to Web sources about foreign countries increased students' knowledge about the countries (Griffin et al., 1997).

There are a number of benefits that online news website provides which newspaper cannot. Starting with the referencing advantage of online news, in tradition newspaper, the news that you see on the front page has the full article somewhere inside that paper. It is a complete mess in finding the complete article in there. On the other hand, the front page of the website shows the similar heading, as on the front page of the newspaper, but finding the complete article is just a click away. Since the internet has a limitless archives of every news occurred in history, the newspaper's website also facilitate its users with the option of "related stories". These options provide further reading on the related news or article that helps providing comprehensive grip over the news, which is not possible in the traditional newspaper. Another advantage of that online news website provides that newspaper do not, is its swiftness in presenting the news. Even the most frequently newspapers are distributed once a day and the news, that newspaper claims in the morning to be today's news, is actually ...