by Larry Kilman
wan-press.org

Paper is an island of peace in the digital ’chaos’ and an ’emerging strength’ for media which demands much more examination, a leading American media critic told the annual Readership Conference of the World Association of Newspapers in Amsterdam on Thursday (16 October).

“The world needs - desperately needs - what newspapers do,” said William Powers , the media columnist for The National Journal magazine in the United States and author of “Hamlet’s Blackberry,” an essay on the enduring power of paper.

Digital media have well-known advantages, but many people often overlook the things that print does better, he said. Newspapers would do well to exploit these qualitative advantages. Among other things, paper “frees up the brain to think,” he said.

“Paper’s great strength is that it allows the mind to ‘settle down’ into that peaceful deep-dive state in which we do our best thinking. This state is much harder to achieve when we’re reading in the digital medium, where there is endless information, and so many possible tasks to undertake at any moment. On the internet, there is no beginning and no end.”... READ FULL STORY