For many years, people relied on the newspapers that were delivered to their homes daily for the news. In old movies and television shows, you could probably count on seeing a scene in which a young boy is riding a bicycle down a suburban street with a canvas bag full of rolled up newspapers slung over his shoulder, tossing one source of information to each driveway.

Today, though most of us still get daily newspapers delivered to our houses early in the morning, that isn’t the first place we can find it. If anything, it’s the last. For people who check the news every morning, they have several other sources to their disposal before they even go outside to fetch the paper. There are news-apps on smart-phones, countless news sources on the Internet if you have easy computer access, and morning news shows on television. That’s all before you even reach your driveway where your newspaper waits!

Getting your news online (whether it is via a phone, iPad, Kindle, or computer) has significant benefits; it is much more current than a paper written and published the night before and it’s quicker and easier to get than the paper.

Though the regular newspaper is much more enriching since it’s full of entire articles instead of headlines with blurbs and pictures with captions, virtual news is “in the now.” Television news shows are also better because (in addition to being in the now) they are less vicarious than a news article. It is visual and most of the time live. The news periodicals are not the way to get informed about breaking news, either. Live news shows on TV are where you learn of events while watching on-site footage most of the time.

As technology is advancing, older forms of media become outdated. The tangible newspaper is not eco-friendly, and when these papers can publish their articles online, why do they need the paper? The way we are headed, newspaper companies only need to publish their articles online–whether it be on their signature apps, websites, or by a daily email. That way, the audience can still get their newspaper-style news, just in a more eco-friendly, current, and faster way.