In the future, nobody will buy printed newspapers or books because they will be able to read everything they want online without paying.
To what extent do you agree or disagree with this statement?
There is a projection that printed newspapers or books are going to perish at the advent of online service that provides free readings to the customers. However, I do not agree with this projection for the two reasons below.
First of all, there are people who really like to read with their eyes and hands. For decades, we are trained to read and study based on printed materials. That means, our habit is constructed with printed newspapers and books. For instance, someone might like to underline the important sentences on the books which is impossible in online reading, the other one might like to collect books in his bookshelves which will be empty when online books were chosen. Thus, if online publishing companies cannot suggest us an overwhelming alternative, it will be hard for many of us to change our old and friendly habit that we made with papers.
Secondly, online services will be charged in some way. That means, they cannot compete with offline publishing companies without proper cash flow that can make better contents. Online market can only provide convenient medium of contents not the contents itself. Thus, to compete with existing offline based publishing companies, offline publishers must spend some chunk of money. For example, to make great novel, they must hire a talented author with reasonable rewards. If they want to write down a great article on their online news, then they must run editorial team with expertise which costs a lot. Naturally, they will admit that the free of charge service is something that cannot exist. So, there will be no cold game based on pricing gap between online and offline companies.
To conclude, considering the profound fundamental of paper based media in our lives and economic principles around the contents market, I cannot foresee only promising view of offline companies. To overcome the offline publishers, there is a long way to go.