The advent of technology has brought about forms of digital media, primarily the internet. Media is defined to be "a form of communicating in the digital world" which includes formats such as the internet, electronic publishing on CD-ROM, DVD, digital television, podcasting, etc. (Definition of: New media, 2008). These forms of media are often coined as “new media”, and compete with the traditional forms of media, such as newspapers, television, radio, and magazines. Inconvenience is the bane of the new generation of people, and they would want everything to be accessible on one platform. The idea of leaving their computer to read a newspaper seems like a chore to them. Hence, they would want to access media utilising the internet. This has resulted in the uprising and popularity of new media. As new media becomes more popular with the new generations, the traditional forms of media risk becoming obsolete and unused by the newer generations of people. The primary reasons for the downfall of traditional forms of media are its inconvenience compared to new media and its inability to provide more than new media does.

Firstly, traditional forms of media are currently deemed by most to be less convenient than new media. From a survey conducted by the New York Times Daily, it found out that daily circulation in 1990 was 1.1 million, but ever since it released its online version of the daily news for the public to access with the click of a mouse, circulation numbers dropped drastically to less than 900,000. This is evident of how people are gradually finding buying newspapers and magazines a routinely burden, and they are more inclined to read news and grasp the latest information through the Internet. With the advent of technology, people now have better access to a plethora of technological devices such as their handphones and laptops, and they are now more able to have much easier access to the latest news instead of going down personally to purchase newspapers. As quoted by Ryan Thomas on the future of newspapers in our current society, “in spite of a good many paperboys who regularly find summer employment, it’s the tech-savvy youth that are primarily responsible for the undoing of anachronistic traditions”. This thus shows that in this new era dominated by technology, people are motivated to grasp the latest news through online sources and new media, rather than going through the monotonous process of reading newspapers or watching news on television. From a survey conducted by the News Centre and Technology, it found out that more than 87% of teenagers find that new media is much more convenient than print/traditional forms of media, with one of the main factors stated to be “Better categorisation”. It is not difficult to imagine the hassle of going through a huge pile of printed news, with most of the content being less than appealing, or not relevant to the type of news you are interested in. With the birth of more online news websites, people are better able to source for the articles which they are interested to read, instead of manually having to go through every single article or watching every single news on the television. Therefore, traditional forms of media are becoming obsolete due to their inconvenience as compared to new forms of media which are more readily available.

Additionally, traditional media pales in comparison to new media in its speed, yet the content remains consistent in both new and traditional media. When an interesting event occurs, new media generally picks it up quickly through the means such as social interaction sites and blogging. Take Osama’s death for example. The news of his death had already spread through “tweets” on the social interaction website “Twitter”, 15 minutes before any television or radio coverage was existent regarding the event. By the time Obama finished his address regarding Osama’s death 75 minutes later, there were already a staggering half a million tweets, eight hundred blogs and five hundred published news articles about Osama’s death. The newspapers, only distributed about 3 times a day, would only contain this news much later. This shows how rapidly news can spread through new media. As technology advances, people want to know about important events the instant it happens, rather than getting delayed news. New media is able to provide them with quicker news as compared to traditional news, and hence new media outshines traditional media in terms of speed. Yet, the content of the traditional media and new media remains roughly the same. Articles published on the internet are generally published earlier than their printed counterparts, and usually contain the same information as the print version does. As such, traditional media is inferior to new media with regard to fulfilling reader’s wants, and this has led to readers taking up new media rather than traditional media, causing traditional media to become obsolete.

Critics may argue that traditional media contains more reliable information than new media does. The basis for this argument is that traditional media passes through experienced writers and editors, and as such are likely to be vetted and contain correct information, whilst some forms of new media are contributed by netizens, which are internet users, and hence may contain biased information or even false information to create hoaxes, resulting in unreliability. The average one-liner comment online is regarded as relatively less meaningful than an opinion page in a newspaper which had gone through numerous edits and vetting beforehand. However, this biased nature of posts on social networks and blogs allow readers to experience how various people perceive a piece of news, and as a result gives readers a broader perspective on the piece of news. After reading many perspectives and views on the piece of news, readers will have a good understanding of the news, and from there they can easily pick out the false news as well as the bias present in what they read, allowing them to still have a comprehensive understanding of the news that traditional media provides. As such, traditional media not only is not more reliable than new media, but also provides a more limited range of perspectives as compared to new media. In addition to having a myriad of unique perspectives from new media, traditional media may also contain news and information that are sensationalised. This is commonly referred to by the news press to be “checkbook journalism”, whereby journalists are encouraged and exclusive rights to write sleazy stories in newspapers, hence it is untrue for traditional forms of media to be more reliable than other forms of media. As a result, new media still outshines traditional media in this aspect, and traditional media is indeed becoming obsolete as it does not necessarily contain accurate information and does not provide the reader with different perspectives regarding a particular issue.

In conclusion, traditional media is obsolete due to the fact that new media is on par with traditional media in terms of reliability and content, but is outshined by new media in speed, convenience and broadness of perspectives. Hence, new media is able to do traditional media’s job better, resulting in traditional media becoming obsolete in this day and age.