IPad-only newspaper?

(Source: Youtube 2011)

Above is a review on Rupert Murdoch’s new iPad-only newspaper.

Rupert Murdoch together with Apple Macintosh launched the new iPad-only newspaper. As stated by Kress and Leeuwen (2006), ‘each feature of a landscape has its history, as does the landscape as a whole; each is a subject to constant remaking’. No longer, readers need to hold on to the rough hard copy, now it is all about scrolling the newspaper on an Ipad. Reading the newspaper from an Ipad is a new idea where people need to get use to. It’s different from reading a newspaper as there is no flipping but only scrolling. Also stated by Kress and Leeuwen (2006) ‘the semiotic modes in such texts can interrelate in different ways’.

The idea of the traditional newspaper being put into the new technology is to mainly gain back the readership. In 2010 the newspaper circulation fell about nine percent because readers prefer reading online, from pages like facebook, twitter, google or yahoo. As Chandler (1997) says ‘the generic corpus ceaselessly expands, genres change over time; the conventions of each genre shift, new genres and sub-genres emerge and others are discontinued’. However, newspapers are still long lasting as there are readers who prefer reading the hard copy. ‘The genre may be considered as a practical device for helping any mass medium to produce consistently and efficiently and to relate its production to the expectations of its customers’ (McQuail 1987, 200). The audiences still have choices; nevertheless, the new change is to attract the others who prefer reading online.

As mention by Nielson (2011), ‘Ipad applications are much improved, but new usability problems have emerged’. It is mostly due to navigation overload yet Ipad still sold over 40 million this year. This means that the idea of reading the news online will still sell. Hence, our technology is always evolving and the media needs to keep up in order to fulfill the audience expectations. As the ‘multimodal texts, compared with print-based texts, the reader will use various senses to respond to other modes’ (Walsh 2006). In sum, audiences now prefer having it all in one like an Ipad where one can read the article, pictures and videos. 

Click here for the original article of iPad-only newspaper furthers media trend.

References:

Chandler 1997, An Introduction to Genre Theory, viewed on 6^th November 2011, <http://faculty.washington.edu/farkas/TC510/ChandlerGenreTheory.pdf >.

Kress & Leeuwen 2006, The semiotic landscape: language and visual communication, 2^nd edn, Routledge, United Kingdom.

McQuail, Denis (1987): Mass Communication Theory: An Introduction (2nd Edn.). London: Sage.

 

Nielson 2011, iPad Usability: Year One, viewed on 6^th November 2011, <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/ipad.html>.

Youtube 2011, The Daily: First look at Rupert Murdoch’s new iPad-only newspaper, viewed on 6^th November 2011, <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oR2cZNpBgbw>.