Future of Newspapers
Have you ever lay in the sun, enjoying the entertainment of reading a newspaper? Have you ever sat in an underground railway, killing your boring time by turning a newspaper? If you have made it, there is no doubt that you may not deny the importance of newspapers as a popular medium.
The first reason underlying my judgment is that newspapers provide us with great convenience. Though the advent of electric media like televisions and computers offer us another way to obtaining information, their generation by electricity circumscribes their uses indoors. On the other hand, newspapers may be carried wherever we intend to. In addition, their small size and light weight will surely spare our effort to take them.
Another incomparable advantage of newspapers lies in their non-pollution. It may be said without fear of exaggeration that almost all those electronic media do harm to people's health.Take televisions for example：exposures to radiations, a kind of pollution, from them in the long run will undermine people's health, and especially for pregnant women. The radiation may even affect the baby to some extent. The same case can also be found in computers without any difficulty. Newspapers, by contrast, are made of natural materials. Therefore no pollution will be given off nor are people subjected to the risk of illness when they read a newspaper.
It is true that electronic media also have some merits superior to newspapers. They can give us more direct information, not only by words but by sounds and pictures as well. But regarding newspapers as a medium of past is an apparent understanding,far from the truth.
According to what has been analyzed above, newspapers have some exclusive advantages compared with other media,which affirm their popularity and will keep it on and on.
簡 評
報紙牢牢佔據著人們的生活，但隨著電子媒體的普及，有人認為報紙已經過時，最終會被電視、網際網路等電子媒體替代，但作者並不同意，認為報紙仍然是極其重要的大眾傳媒。為什麽?
作者從便利性及健康性兩方面進行說明，電子媒體固然方便，但使用範圍局限于室內，而重量輕、尺寸小的報紙則可以帶到任何地方;作者還認為報紙由自然材料製成，不會產生污染，而電子媒體對人體特別是對孕婦有害。他雖然也承認電子媒體在有些方面優于報紙，如提供聲音、圖像等，但還是認為報紙具有獨特的優勢，其流行性將長久不衰。作者有些表述不夠完全，如隨著技術的進步，電子媒體會克服自身缺陷，增加便攜性，減少對身體的危害。而報紙也有一些缺點，如自然資源的大量消耗，新聞時效的滯後等。事實上，電子媒體一直在蠶食報紙的地盤，因此作者的觀點並不是特別有說服力。