huridocs-tech "Fourth Media" To Dominate in 21st Century

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## author     : alexanian@uncwil.edu
## date       : 14.04.99
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"Fourth Media" To Dominate in 21st Century

BEIJING (April 14) XINHUA - The power of the "fourth media",
the Internet and information super-highway, will probably
outweigh the traditional media -- newspapers, radio and
television within one or two decades, delegates to an
international conference on the press were told today.
"Press communities all over the world are undergoing a major
reform," said Zhou Guangzhao, vice-chairman of the Standing
Committee of the Chinese National People's Congress and
chairman of the China Association for Science and
Technology, at the opening ceremony of the Second
Asia-Pacific Symposium on the press and scientific and
social progress.

He pointed out that the development of the fourth media will
be a great gift for the 21st Century.

"Nowadays, reporters are able to use the Internet to cover
and write news stories all over the world, and can send out
their stories worldwide at any time," said Ellis Rubinstein,
chief editor of American's prestigious Science magazine.

He said that the Internet has provided rich information
sources and opportunities for reporters, and that the wide
use of the fourth media is gradually changing the work style
of news people.

"The development of Internet techniques will have a
substantial impact on the development of newspapers in the
Chinese language," said Wang Xuan, an academician with the
Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The growth of the Internet since 1993 has been phenomenal
with now an estimated 150 million people worldwide regularly
surfing and this is expected to double by the year 2001.
This growth rate far surpasses that of radio and television
which took several decades to reach comparable figures.

The four-day symposium, with the theme "Science and
Technology and the Development Strategy of Newspapers in the
21st Century", is jointly sponsored by the Ministry of
Science and Technology, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the
China Science and Technology Association, the Xinhua News
Agency and the Chinese Foreign Language Press Institute.

Delegates from more than 100 news organizations, research
institutes and enterprises in the Asian-Pacific region
attended the meeting. Enditem 14/04/99 11:29 GMT




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