iPad-only newspaper furthers media trend

Source: http://www.editorsweblog.org/assets_c/2010/02/ipadalone-thumb-200x115-5510-thumb-200x115-5511-thumb-200x115-5634.jpg

Apple enjoyed the sales of 7.26 million devices for iPad 2 since its release in April 2010 which allows iPad to become the top selling and most popular tablet in the world. Hence, there are many news corporation are seeking a chance to enter the market by coming out with newspaper mobile apps (Trotter, 2011).

It shows that iPad tends to take place in the future media trend by taking over newspaper whereby people can easily read the news by using the apps. In this case, according to NYT USA, NPR for iPad were among the top 10 most-downloadable iPad apps where it shows that people todays are engaging themselves into the world of internet (Conde, 2011). In Malaysia, The Star newspaper is offering free apps for users to download at the iTunes by allowing people to enjoy reading newspaper for free.

Source: http://itunes.apple.com/my/app/the-star-malaysia/id392881083?mt=8

However, the public opinion varies when comes to the newspaper and the iPad. Some people finds that the iPad newspaper is a cheaper and convenient ways to obtain the latest news where some people tends to reject the thought of reading from a tablet as they thinks that ‘there’s something special about the newspaper’ (Trotter, 2011)..

The iPad newspaper are using a multimodal way to deliver the message where the meaning of the text is communicate through a synchronization of modes such as moving images and videos (Walsh, 2006). However a printed newspaper can do things that the iPad newspaper can’t do such as using the double pages and the page design to attract the readers’ reading interest. People might feel annoyed with the multimodal ways when there are too many hyperlinks and it is tiring by facing the screen for a long time.

I believe that iPad newspaper and the printed newspaper have their advantages and drawbacks as Bezener & Kress (2005) says that there are different types of affordance in meaning making for each mode as it communicates in its own meaning. The demand for printed newspaper might decrease but due to the differences between both modes, there are still people who prefer reading the printed newspaper instead of iPad newspaper.

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Reference

Trotter C, 2011, “iPad-only newspaper furthers media trend”, viewed 15^th November 2011, <http://www.thecento.com/news/2011/feb/17/ipad-only-newspaper-furthers-media-trend/>

Conde M, 2011, “iPad: reactions, reviews, and how newspaper apps are doing”, viewed 15^th November, 2011, <http://www.editorsweblog.org/analysis/2010/04/it_was_back_in_january.php>

Walsh, M 2006, 'The 'textual shift': Examining the reading process with print, visual and multimodal texts', Australian Journal of Language and Literacy.

Bezemer, J & Kress, G 2008, ‘Writing in multimodal texts’, Written Communication, vol.25, no.2, pp.166-195.