Newspapers fly after Obama win

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/11/06/obama.newspapers.ap/index.html

Last issue I wrote my op ed about how written journalism is about to die out to internet journalism. This article proves that while the trend is there, there is something about written news that will most likely live on. Why? It could be habit – people have always bought newspapers, so when an important news story comes along, their subconscious minds make them by the papers. I, however, don’t think that’s it. I think that while millions of Americans watched the election on television and knew the results ahead of time, and while the articles proclaiming President-Elect Obama’s victory didn’t reveal any “new” information other than his win, Americans wanted that tangible proof of the historic event.
In my life I’ve come across historic newspapers a few times, and there is something about them that pulls you in, or at least, pulls me in. When man first walked on the moon, when Pearl Harbor happened, newspaper articles declaring the events feel almost like landmarks – marks in time in our country’s history. The Internet changes everyday, and while there is that stigma that what gets on the internet never leaves, stories do change, and aren’t physical in the way that newspapers are. I think that element of constant change (cnn’s webpage is different ever day, as are most online news sources) and the idea that reading an article online is so instant – you pull it up, read it, and click off – can be viewed as negative. Sure, the Internet is fast, but do we really want this information to go by so quickly? When there is an important historic moment in time, people don’t want it to end just like that. I know I don’t. And so perhaps the Internet, while expanding and overcoming all other written media, won’t push over the edge to replace newspapers entirely – at least, not when something truly life-changing happens to our country, or to the world.
As for the way this article was written, and I liked how the writer followed my train of thought with the internet vs. newspaper thing. The inclusion of so many quotes enhanced the article, I feel, because it gave it less of a straight news style and made the story more relatable - you got to find out why people were buying so many newspapers and how they felt, rather than just hearing statistics on how many newspapers were sold out in how many minutes.