How do you get your daily fix of current events? Online or the old fashioned way; printed publications. I personally don't know how I used to get by without my RSS feeds keeping me up to date. In fact I have not bought a newspaper or used the yellow or white pages in nearly 6 years. The mere thought of thumbing through pages of dirty ink seems completely illogical when the internet can sort me out in mere seconds with clean fingered bliss.

Am I alone? In the grand scheme of things maybe. But a recent study published findings indicating 40% of 18 to 34 year olds living in America prefer to get their news from online sources. Only 19% still do not mind getting their hands grubby reading a newspaper. Unsurprisingly television is still the most popular source of news for the same demographic; as there are obviously more televisions in households than computers with internet access.

While online publications are not threatening print mediums now, their days are clearly numbered.

On April 13 media mogul Rupert Murdoch gave a speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors where he stated that only 9% of young readers believe newspaper to be a trustworthy source of information, 8% found it useful and only 4% found it entertaining.

It would be a fair assumption that a typical corporation like Murdoch's ultimately will make decisions with the bottom line in mind, so theoretically it will not be long until all the major publications realise that distributing content over the internet and to mobile phones and PDA's is more cost effective than physically printing it on paper in a massive factory with several hundred employees and delivering by truck to their destinations. Not to mention the environment will benefit significantly with no paper consumption and chemical ink requirements.

How long before the demise of the print medium for news is anyone's guess. I would be very surprised if you are still able to buy a newspaper or magazine in printed form after the next 10 to 15 years. After that we will all be receiving the news on one of the many portable devices we will carry around everywhere we go.

For some including myself, that day arrived a long time ago and we have never looked back.

Sources...

• Rupert Murdoch: Speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors
• The Carnegie Study: Abandoning the news