Computer in Use. Маркушевская Л.П - 25 стр.

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Университет ИТМО | Санкт-Петербург

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25
Reading and translating
ELECTRONIC NEWSPAPERS: WILL THEY BE HERE SOON?
Economic realities are pushing the nation's dailies to the edge of a new era:
delivery of written news to customers on their home screen. Confronted with a
technological revolution that threatens their survival, American newspapers are
joining the electronic age instead of fighting it.
Some are already experimenting with transmission of stories electronically into
homes for reading on television screens. Many big newspapers are buying into cable
television companies as a step toward electronic publishing. At the same time
newspapers are putting more emphasis on the quality of their writing and reporting to
gain new readers and keep those they already have.
Behind those developments are hard and increasingly important facts. During
the 1970s total daily newspapers' circulation in the US hovered around the 60 million
marks despite an 11 per cent rise in the nation's population and a 22 per cent increase
in the number of households. The proportion of people who read a paper daily
dropped from 69% to 57%. Afternoon newspapers would hardly compete with the
television network evening program.
Growing number of publishers see electronic technology as a possible answer
to these problems. They fear that if they don't go down that road the others will. The
new technology is bringing all media into a common arena. The distinction that
separated newspapers from magazines, that made television different from
newspapers is now blurring.
Nobody knows for sure how
rapidly electronic publishing will become a part of
everyday journalism. Already some newspapers are leasing cable channels on which
subscribers are able to read reports from various wire services, local news rewritten
for viewing on a screen, weather and even advertising. Many people see a wholesale
shift from print to electronics as still decades away.
They cite cost factors and also argue that reading words on a screen is a much
less efficient way than print to absorb large amounts of information.
For these reasons, some analysts believe electronic publishing will develop
slowly, with most papers limiting themselves to transmission of stock tables, motion
pictures listings, sport results, headlines, classified ads and similar materials. All
these are relatively easy to read on screen and can be continuously updated.
Even such limited transmission would lead to shrinkage in the size of the daily
newspaper subscribers. Therefore publishers are taking steps to make dailies more
competitive with television's attractions by improving content and making new use of
print technology.
Notes
bring into a common arena - приводить на одну (общую) сцену
classified ads - рекламные объявления

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