Impact of on-Line Newspapers on the Readership of Newspaper Hardcopies

ABSTRACT
This study is to determine how newspaper is being read on internet and student of Osun state polytechnic Iree. This study examined on the development of newspaper, mass communication readership, issues of gratification, the factors that are responsible for on line newspaper and the factors that determines the newspaper hard copies entirely. The sample size for this research is (150) which the population were people in Osogbo. The theories used are diffusion of innovation, knowledge gaps, and play theory of Mass Communication. The study found that online newspaper readership impacts the newsgathering stage of newspaper production in Nigeria in that reporters in newspaper organizations that publish both prints and online versions are not only cognizant of online news readers in the course of newsgathering, but also make use of user-generated contents (UGC) from online news readers as sources of information, does not impact the news editing stage of newspaper production in Nigeria as editors neither require reporters to file reports to file reports in ways that make such reports suitable for online reading nor do they shorten or re-write stories to be published online having regard to the universally accepted difference between online and print newspaper readers, does not impact the number of hard copies printed daily by Nigerian newspapers as the reduction of the number of print copies that goes into daily circulation and has not been found to be attributable to online readership of newspaper, and does not impact operating revenue of Nigerian newspapers in that it has not been found to directly affect advertising revenue or sale of newspaper print copies. The study recommended that Nigerian newspaper organizations should take full advantage of the internet technologies in all phases of newspaper production as well as develop a business model that will compensate for the free readership of online news on newspaper websites. Suggestions for further studies were made.