The Death of Print
ENG 122-404
27 February 2012
The Death of Print and the Drowning of Quality Writing Daniel Okrent has been in the publishing industry his whole career. He is a published author and has served as an editor for Time, Life, and the New York Times. In a 1999 lecture to students attending Columbia University’s School of Journalism, Okrent predicts, “I believe they (news papers, magazines, and books), and all forms of print are dead” (Okrent 578). A little harsh, wouldn’t you agree? But fear not, he then goes on to describe how even though the death of print is inevitable, it really doesn’t make a difference because it is the words, sentences, and paragraphs in those forms of print that are important. Now, the majority of the reading I take in comes from online sources. I probably manage to read an average of about one book every two years. This amount is hardly anything to brag about. However, I do find myself viewing specialized topics online that I would probably have had to read a book to gain knowledge on if the online sources weren’t so easily accessible. I also subscribe to a few print magazines that I have interest in. Looking at the literature landscape today, Okrent’s predictions on the future of the print industry seem to be eerily accurate. However, a bit of wishful thinking seems to come through in his claims that “ . . . the words and pictures and ideas and images and notions and substance that we produce is what matters – and not the vessel they arrive in” (Okrent 580). Do the vessels matter? Can quality writing and accurate information find its way through the unfiltered sewage of unchecked claims, shock bloggers, and desperately aggressive advertising? Okrent goes on to explain his claims on the inevitable death of in two parts: Part one, in a phrase, is that we have, I believe, finally learned not to underestimate the march of technological progress. A little over thirty years ago, I saw my first electronic calculator. It was
27 February 2012
The Death of Print and the Drowning of Quality Writing Daniel Okrent has been in the publishing industry his whole career. He is a published author and has served as an editor for Time, Life, and the New York Times. In a 1999 lecture to students attending Columbia University’s School of Journalism, Okrent predicts, “I believe they (news papers, magazines, and books), and all forms of print are dead” (Okrent 578). A little harsh, wouldn’t you agree? But fear not, he then goes on to describe how even though the death of print is inevitable, it really doesn’t make a difference because it is the words, sentences, and paragraphs in those forms of print that are important. Now, the majority of the reading I take in comes from online sources. I probably manage to read an average of about one book every two years. This amount is hardly anything to brag about. However, I do find myself viewing specialized topics online that I would probably have had to read a book to gain knowledge on if the online sources weren’t so easily accessible. I also subscribe to a few print magazines that I have interest in. Looking at the literature landscape today, Okrent’s predictions on the future of the print industry seem to be eerily accurate. However, a bit of wishful thinking seems to come through in his claims that “ . . . the words and pictures and ideas and images and notions and substance that we produce is what matters – and not the vessel they arrive in” (Okrent 580). Do the vessels matter? Can quality writing and accurate information find its way through the unfiltered sewage of unchecked claims, shock bloggers, and desperately aggressive advertising? Okrent goes on to explain his claims on the inevitable death of in two parts: Part one, in a phrase, is that we have, I believe, finally learned not to underestimate the march of technological progress. A little over thirty years ago, I saw my first electronic calculator. It was
Cited: Okrent, Daniel. “The Death of Print?” Good Reasons with Contemporary Arguments. Ed. Lester Faigley and Jack Selzer. Boston: Pearson, 2012. 576-582. Print.