APRIL FOOLS’: This article was published as part of The News-Letter’s annual April Fools’ edition, an attempt at adding some humor to a newspaper that is normally very serious about its reporting. This is not true.
To most — if not all — Americans, print journalism is “dead.” The News-Letter is not among those misguided souls.
We are pleased to announce that beginning next week, we will cease all digital operations (our website, TikTok and Instagram) and return to doing the news as it was meant to be: in print form.
We know that this decision will be disruptive for many of you. After all, we are Generation Z: the generation raised on the internet. But, we are confident that this decision is for the good of the Hopkins community and the paper.
As the famous Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan said, “People don’t actually read newspapers. They step into them every morning like a hot bath.”
Sure, you could get the same news in a print paper or a web article. But, it is the experience of picking up a hard copy of a paper and feeling the pages between your fingers; the experience of taking a seat with a warm cup of coffee and unfolding the A and B sections; and the experience of wow-ing at the pictures that show up so brilliantly in ink that is so captivating and impactful.
It’s like questioning why you would bother going out for dinner when you have food at home. It is about the experience of the news. When it comes to that, nothing beats print.
We are not unaware of the allure of the digital age, namely that digitizing news makes information more accessible to students. “Never fear, if you don’t want to schlep all the way over to campus to grab our papers, you can log in to Instagram or our website to get the news,” we decided in whatever year the paper went digital.
But, let’s be honest: This has failed. How many of you actually click on the link in our bio of Instagram after mindlessly liking our latest post? Or which of you regularly visit our website to read our articles and ponder the information shared?
Case in point.
By switching to print-only journalism, we are not only honoring the tradition of what The News-Letter was for over a century (before the pesky invention of the internet), but also incentivizing our readers to actually read our articles in full.
No more only reading the quote pulled out for our Instagram post or skimming an article in split-screen while watching Netflix. No; now your attention is fully on the news, without the distraction of TikTok, Netflix or Canvas on the same platform. The logical outcome is a more nuanced and extensive engagement with the news from which we will all benefit.
You might say, “Well, what about breaking news? Surely you can post that online.” Wrong again. Breaking news is meant to be in print — what else than being printed onto the front page of a newspaper gives the breaking and most important news of our times its due? And what could be better than darting out to the local newsstand after breaking news to grab the latest copy of The News-Letter?
If you’d like to read all about the updates to the AMR I construction, the review of the Barnstormers’ latest performance or the other exceptional work produced by us, you’ll have to read our print paper.
We are so back.
