About Print Media

---

Lightweight, portable, disposable publications printed on paper

---

Reading The Newspaper statue at Brookgreen Gardens, Pawleys Island, South Carolina

Print Media

Print media are lightweight, portable, disposable publications printed on paper and circulated as physical copies in forms we call books, newspapers, magazines and newsletters.

They hold informative and entertaining content that is of general or special interest. They are published either once or daily, weekly, biweekly, monthly, bimonthly or quarterly.

Their competitors include electronic, broadcast and Internet media. Today, many books, newspapers, magazines and newsletters publish digital electronic editions on the Internet.

Books

• Books are the oldest medium of mass communication.
• They are collections of printed pages bound together.
• Their content can be information and/or entertainment.
• Preparation and production of a book can take many months.
• According to Google, there may be 130 million books in circulation.

Newspapers

• Newspapers are collections of printed pages folded together.
• Their content is mostly public affairs and events information reporting with some entertainment.
• Preparation and production of a newspaper can take hours.
• Tens of thousands of individual newspapers are published.

Magazines

• Magazines are collections of printed pages bound together.
• Their content includes both information and entertainment.
• Preparation and production of a magazine can take many weeks.
• There are some 20,000 different magazines.

Newsletters

• Newsletters are regular publications of only a few folded pages.
• Generally, they address one main topic and are informative or entertaining.
• Newsletters provide information to members, customers, employees and friends of organizations.
• Preparation and production of a newsletter may require only a few hours.
• There are hundreds of thousands of newsletters.

News Media

• News media are the elements of mass media that bring us reports of current events and current affairs information.
• They include print media such as newspapers and magazines, and electronic and broadcast media such as radio and television, websites, blogs, wikis, Facebook pages, Twitter tweets, and online representations of traditional news media.

Journalism

• Newspapers began as journals, so the industry profession came to be called journalism.
• Journalists intend to inform their target audiences about events, issues and trends.
• The field includes professional specialties such as photojournalism, science journalism, magazine journalism, broadcast journalism, editing, producing and others.

Learn more:

• Books and their History »
• A Brief History of Journalism in America »
• A Brief History of Magazines »
• About Entertainment Media »
• What is Journalism? »
• Journalism and Public Relations Compared »
• New Media History In Brief »
• Brief History of Social Media »
• Using Social Media in Journalism »

Resources for Courses »
© 2011 Dr. Anthony Curtis, Mass Communication Dept., University of North Carolina at Pembroke    e-mail    home page