Forecasting a gloomy future for the global newspaper industry, eminent journalist and Prasar Bharati Chairman M V Kamat on Thursday said newspapers might lose their relevance in the next one decade and even become extinct due to the explosion of Information Technology.
Already the circulation of newspapers, including the popular New York Times and The Washington Post, had gone down deeply while the Times of London had now become a tabloid, he said at the inauguration of the three-day 'Print Congress-2007', an International Conference on 'Print and Media Technology', in Manipal.
He cautioned that even books would also become irrelevant as the number of book lovers was drastically coming down and a day would come where everything would be heard and nothing would be seen. "The IT may change your lifestyle in future so that you may not require paper... just information and not knowledge," he added.
The conference is being organised by the Department of Printing and Media Engineering of Manipal Institute of Technology.
Gunther Keppler, the General Manager of Heidelberg India, who inaugurated the Congress while contradicting the views of Kamat, said the argument that IT would lead to paperless offices had been found to be false. "We could find today more paper in the offices than before."
He said that the application of know how of printing education would be decisive in the printing production investment projects. Training and education was most important in print media segment, he added.
Dr S S Pabla, Director of MIT, said that the institute was one among the seven engineering colleges in the country offering BTech degree in print and media engineering.
It was also seriously considering commence PG course in print related subject as there was deep dearth of qualified personnel to meet the increasing needs of ever growing printing and graphic art industry.
He said he had taken up the issue of reducing the fees for Masters Degree and PH. D with both the Management and the Manipal University with which the institute was associated.
