May the print live long!

"New is not always better, despite the hype," warns Manos Antoninis, the Director of the UNESCO'S Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report since 2017.

These are the testing times for the print reading because of the onslaught of digital media. However, print reading has withstood such existential threats so far. The latest technology, whatever it was and is, for instance, radio, television or internet, has always signalled the demise of the printed word, but the latter persists unstaggered. Naturalists believe that digital media can never match the tactility of print media offering man the curative touch of Nature.

National Newspaper Readership Day is observed on September 25, and it is high time to gauge the current status of newspaper readership in our society. A cursory interaction with the students of secondary and higher secondary, even graduation, classes reveals the shocking scenario that students know nothing about newspapers. The causative factors are the print media itself, the educational institutes, and the popularity of digital and social media among teenagers.

It's no rocket science to locate the reasons for the increasing popularity of the digital word. According to Statista, more than 83 per cent of the world's population owns a smartphone. In a world addicted to 'fast food' of digital content, reading the printed word is analogous to having a ten course dinner. It's an undeniable fact that durability and authenticity of the content are the demarcating factors between the two means of information.

The digital source is clogged with distracting information pollution, impacting the young minds beyond repair. Investigative and indepth coverage of social and political phenomena is the characteristic feature of print media, an area wherein it can excel all other forms of communication. Print media is deemed by all demographics, including Millennials, as more trustworthy than its digital counterpart. We are witnessing a modern Titanomachy: cellulose fibre vs optical fibre; nature vs artificiality.

The Nielsen Norman Group (NN/g), an American user experience research firm, explicates in its research on people who read online that people predominantly scan the digital content and do not read it. Based on their eye-tracking experiment data, the research company finds out that 79% of people are more likely to scan the digital page while only 16% of people read every word on an online page. People process the digital content in a non-linear pattern, i.e., rummage the content for the desired and targeted information only.

The NN/g further illustrates that when people read online, they don't just scan: they search for answers and nothing else. They read quite mechanically, and their reading is result oriented, not pleasure centric. The hasty manner of reading online leaves little time for the user to imbibe the content and assimilate it to his long-term memory. Moreover, this mode of reading engenders the habit of regurgitating what has been read – the sooner, the better. There is no denying the fact that print reading develops in readers the cognitive depth and the habit of metacognition, both being complementary to each other.

Teaching and reading the digital content gained currency and validity in the days of COVID-19, but the UNESCO's 2023 Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report says: "Almost one in four countries have banned smart phones in schools due to concerns regarding their impact on students' well being and distraction from learning."

UNESCO's report entitled 'Technology in Education: A tool on whose terms?' describes, in essence, the analysis of 200 education systems, and posits six key points for policymakers and the global education community.

1. Good, impartial evidence on the impact of education technology is in short supply

2. Technology offers an education lifeline for millions but excludes many more

3. Some education technology can improve some types of learning in some contexts

4. The fast pace of change in technology is putting strain on education systems to adapt

5. Online content has grown without enough regulation of quality control or diversity

6. Technology is often bought to plug a gap with no view to the long-term costs

Now in our part of the world, the unmonitored use of technology in education and for information can promote our "instinctively investing in technology in education without making sure that it is going to improve learning". Manos Antoninis says: "Education technology products change every 36 months, on average. While systemic reviews show a small-to-medium positive effect on learning outcomes, the evidence can be biased as it is often funded by technology companies."

Empirically, the study of newspaper lends cerebral novelty, the antidote to clichéd concepts and arguments. A newspaper continuously adds to the reader's repertoire of diction and grammatical constructions. Moreover, a newspaper provides simultaneously global and local content at one information agora – a concept known as glocalisation.

To nurture an attitude required for acing the CSS exam, newspaper reading must start at an early age of secondary and higher secondary students. Newspaper is undeniably a handy tool to evolve the interest in reading the written word. It undoubtedly goes a long way in nurturing the catholicity of viewpoint and taste. Its reader is transformed into a complete Renaissance man.

It is high time that libraries had to be made functional, and the availability of newspapers and access to them in libraries had to be concretised. At public schools, the budget for newspapers must be enhanced to subscribe to more newspapers than one, and the presence of an English newspaper must be made mandatory if we want to cultivate a culture of students who could perform befittingly in competitive exams. Individually, the monthly subscription of a newspaper doesn't exceed the price of a large pizza.

Newspapers must devise ways to make the interaction live between the article writers and the readers. Sometimes, readers, particularly CSS aspirants, want to argue with the writers of columns and articles to crystallise the grey areas in their concepts. It can be achieved by including a Question/Answer section in the space reserved for letters to the editor.

We should keep in mind that newspaper – an endangered species nearing its extinction, God forbid! – is a one-volume, constantly transmogrifying encyclopedia easy for everyone to tap into for their requisite demands of knowledge.