Newspaper is quite a powerful tool that circulates pieces of information to people. It is one of the greatest means of communication between people and the world. In addition, they are also a great medium of knowledge. In the past, newspapers played an even more important role because they helped to improve literacy and encouraged people to fight for freedom and human rights. However, in the current era of digitalization reading newspapers becomes quite an old habit. The older generations mainly maintain the reading of newspapers, whereas younger generations tend to check current news on the Internet.
Being called the relict of the past reading newspapers is one of the most beneficial habits. It helps us to get to know the world’s current affairs. We are getting to know about the latest events from a reliable source. Moreover, reading newspapers equips people with crucial critical thinking skills and connects them to the real world.
Most importantly, the topics covered by newspaper articles are more relevant and exciting to read than textbook passages, making newspapers both informative and enjoyable. Newspapers represent the highest standard for journalistic writing and demonstrate how excellent writing looks like. Reading them help in developing a person’s vocabulary. You can learn new words and correct your grammar by reading a newspaper. Also, a person reading a newspaper can speak fluently on a variety of subjects.
In spite of having a great variety of benefits, the habit of reading newspapers is becoming ,,a sign of the past’’. Nowadays, the Internet is a real commodity. People process loads of information on the web every day, electronic gadgets are more convenient, so young generations don’t bother to pick up a newspaper. Everything is comfortable and visual now that so many people do not want to read papers, books, letters, etc. The constant development of the Internet makes matters worse.
As a result, we can observe that the younger generation has problems with their vocabulary skills. They very often do not know how to spell and depend on autocorrect to correct their mistakes. Necessarily to add, the most dangerous is the spread of false news.
To conclude, we cannot avoid the constant development and presence of social media in many aspects of our life. People should read more newspapers, and stop reading every second article published on the web, they should be critical thinkers, who can find the balance between reading the traditional newspapers and pieces of information published online.
This article was written by the project manager from Warsaw Chamber of Commerce within the project ‘’Media Literacy Explorers’’