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<\/figure>Within the framework of the series of activities held by the University of Sciences and Arts in Lebanon USAL, the Faculty of Media hosted the director of the electronic website at the newspaper Al-Safir Professor Mounir Al-Khatib in a dialogue circle entitled \u201cThe Reality of the Print Press and Its Challenges\u201d. The seminar addressed many problems, the most prominent being: the crisis of the print press amid the rise of electronic media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Al-Khatib attributes the decline of the print press to many causes, such as the costs related to printing, paper and transport, whereas electronic media has offered facilities without limit in this respect, which leaves print no room to compete.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He adds that electronic media has made it possible for journalistic work to reach the largest segment of people: compared with the electronic sites viewed by millions, how widely read is the newspaper? Consequently its capacity for holding to account and for influence is greater. It has also created interactive spaces between writers and readers, such as the possibility of commenting on articles, criticizing them or praising them; and this space has increased since electronic media was linked to social media - all of which was not available in the newspaper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Al-Khatib holds that the real challenge lies in how to benefit from the means the age makes available to us, which are many, and he regretted that we still do not invest in them as we should, affirming that print will decline in distribution but will not come to an end, for it has its public, and that the future belongs to the digital, while hoping that it will have the credibility print had.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And as everything has its merits and its problems, Al-Khatib points to the problems of electronic media, among them: the great flood of journalistic material electronically, which leads to distracting the reader; in addition to some important issues not receiving their due attention; as well as the spread of mistaken news items circulated among people that later turn out to be untrue or inaccurate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The director of the Al-Safir website points out that the electronic world is still in a state of experiment as regards the patterns of dealing with read material and the best way of sending it - a problem that affects not only the Arab press but the international press as well; for while some say there is a need for long narrative as long as the electronic medium has made reading easier, others hold that multimedia must be adopted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There remains a crisis suffered by electronic media, in that the content is still free: how do we turn the digital product into a paid product, and consequently into income? There is a trend, as Al-Khatib says, for some material to be free and some of it paid for, until the digital economy finds a way of selling content.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At the close of the meeting Al-Khatib stresses that the media profession does not mean only conveying news and information; before all that it is a means of holding to account. The media - in its various forms, among them the press - is a fourth authority whose task is to lay bare corruption and to inform public opinion of it so that it may hold to account; and this is the essence of its message, whether digital or print, televised or radio. What matters, in the view of the seminar's guest, is attention to the content of the work and not to the medium, because we have the capacity to adapt to the medium.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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