The Impacts of Recent Computer-Based Technological Developments upon Australia’s Newspaper Printing Industry

The impacts of recent computer-based technological developments upon Australia’s newspaper printing industry

Serial Number: MEB1311

Student ID: 27231305

Class: RR

Research Question: What is the impact of recent technological developments upon the media in Australia?

  After the extending of printing craft, the newspaper industry emerged at a historic moment. Rapidly, the newspaper became popular as an essential and efficient way for the public to get information. Because of the high yield of the newspaper industry and relatively higher income of newspaper employees, working on the newspaper, including on newspaper printing, was considered as a recommended career in the past (Cryle, 2008, in Geldens & Marjoribanks, 2015). In Australia, the newspaper industry has been the dominator of the media field for hundreds of years. However, as the computer-based technologies developed in recent decades, the newspaper industry has been challenged. Newspaper printers who work on the newspaper printing process have to face job insecurity and precariousness. Although this current situation may be frustrating for newspaper printers, it is one of characteristics of new technologies and media.

Marshall McLuhan, a Canadian philosopher of communication theory and a public intellectual (Raphael, 2015), organized four laws to describe the characters of each medium. These laws, also named “Tetrad”, are amplification, reversal, obsolescence and retrieval (Levison, 2003). Each part of the tetrad has a specific impact on media. For example, according to Levison’s article (2003), the amplification of media shows the enhancement that the medium contributes to the society or the human’s daily life. The reversal represents the reverse of a medium which has been evolved to its fullest potential. The obsolescence is that traditional media are obsoleted by new media. The retrieval means bringing back something that is marginalized by current media. One of these four laws, for instance, the obsolescence, is applied to analyse the recent job insecurity and precariousness of media jobholders.

In Australia, computer-based technologies have already obsoleted traditional newspaper industry. Papandrea (2013) mentions that it is not the first time that the newspapers have faced competitions. Although Television and radio became major rivals in the market, they did not threaten the newspaper industry entirely. Each medium has its own special strengths and areas of expertise so that each medium could not fully inform the audience in every area. Nevertheless, the Internet, as a representative of computer-based technical innovation, offers a comprehensive and efficient method to present information. It shrinks newspapers’ market share dramatically. Similarly, the popularization of automatic printing machines poses huge threats to the employment of printers. Geldens & Marjoribanks (2015) indicate that in the past, printers who wore functional uniforms and produced newspapers by hands were identified as skilled individuals. However, now printers are wearing white collar shirts and using automatic printing machines with lower expertise to make newspapers. They just press “…a button and everything will print” (Geldens & Marjoribanks, 2015, p. 142). Due to the loss of markets and technical innovation, media companies have to move their attention and change their investment tendency. The consequence of technical updating is adjusting the existing industrial structure. With the restructuring, job insecurity and precariousness have developed into newspaper printers’ employment. Furthermore, Geldens and Marjoribanks (2015) point out that the innovation of new technologies not only reduces the employment of printers but also reflects the loss of job characteristics and processes. The emergence of automatic printing machines brings about that newspaper printing production is going to be less hand-made which had made printers feel proud and satisfied in the craft of printing previously. (Geldens & Marjoribanks, 2015).