Each newspaper has an electronic website which it continuously tries to improve and modernize while opening new horizons for healthy and reader-friendly interactive reading to gain a wider audience for its news, reports and the opinions of its writers. Each newspaper is trying to catch up with the electronic revolution that knows no rest and abhors relaxation, as is the case with paper. Each newspaper has readers and surfers which may support its reports and oppose its writers, or maybe support its writers and believe that its news and reports are week. However, does this inclination not mark the belief of the printed press in the true future value of electronic publication? There is not one newspaper that does not have its eyes on the "web" and is drawing up an editorial approach for its daily electronic work alongside its work on paper. In Saudi Arabia, the attacks against the printed press are increasing in order to devaluate it in the eyes of its lovers and fans. However, until now, these "Kalashnikovs" have failed to eliminate it. Nonetheless, at a time when the majority of these attacks are being launched by electronic publishers, those representing the newspapers are "remaining silent" and failing to stage any opposition, which proves the veracity of the arguments. On the other hand, they are incessantly seeking ways that would uphold the influence of the press. In the year 2000, publisher and chief editor of Elaph, colleague Othman al-Omeir, foresaw the future of electronic publishing when he launched the Elaph website, knowing he is the son of the press where he spent more than three decades between its labyrinths and among its prelates. During a speech he delivered at the Arab Media Forum in Dubai last year, he called for the preparation of the coffins for the burial of paper, saying: "May God have mercy on the soul of printed press" and assuring: "The new media outlets are tightening the noose around the daily publications, which forced some of them to turn to electronic publishing." Moreover, Chief Editor of Al-Arabiya.net website, colleague Daoud al-Shiryan, already wrote in Al-Hayat saying that the "delay of the burial of paper has nothing to do with the feasibility of the idea, but rather with the attachment of the generation of paper to the sense of touch." He indicated that in the Arab world, paper will not buried any time soon, but that once life is breathed into the Arab websites and once they start changing by the minute, the paper version will no longer find anyone to celebrate it or await its arrival. In this context and in an interview on the Saudi Al-Ikhbariya news channel, the general supervisor of the electronic Saudi Nation News Agency, colleague Hani al-Dhahiry, said when asked about the fate of printed press: "It is dying and should thus turn toward the electronic moulds and change its policies which are at odds with the requirements of today's generation if it wishes to survive," adding: "Regardless of its content, printed press is harmful to the environment." For his part and during the South by Southwest Interactive festival for new technologies in Houston-Texas, American writer Steven Johnson believed that the written press was on the brink of becoming extinct, recommending the full disposal of the printed press and expressing optimism toward the future of electronic press. This opinion was supported by the chief editor of the Lebanese Al-Anwar newspaper, Rafik Khoury, who recently assured that the printed press was retreating in favor of the electronic press, indicating that his own newspaper had started relying on aid and donations. But why has the electronic press so far failed to monopolize the advertisements in a way that would threaten the revenues of the printed press? Why has the Arab press not been forced until this day to resort to free distribution, as it was seen in some Western countries and in the case of the British Evening Standard in particular? Why are the reports carried by the electronic press still perceived with caution? Did the fact that the electronic publications are not subjected to regulations, laws and censorship like their paper counterparts earn them a reputation of "recklessness" despite their legitimate presence? At the end of 2008, I wrote an article headlined: "The printed press and the crisis of survival," after I stood on a hazardous electronic threshold and before a global financial crisis, assuring that the media as a means will continue to exist and its purpose will also be upheld, whether through the print, video, audio or electronic medium, or through any new product that surpasses the latter. Today, the picture is clearer after the Bahraini Al-Waqt and the Kuwaiti Awan newspapers buried their printed versions at the beginning of May amid signs pointing to the possible march toward the grave of other Gulf and Arab papers. There is no doubt that the spirit of the press will continue to breathe, whether on paper, electronically or over the phone, because the people need their formulations, their analyses and investigations. I would like to conclude by citing a comment posted by a reader on the website of a certain newspaper. He said: "I believe that the printed press will dissipate with the generation of our fathers, thus inaugurating the era of a new and more professional electronic press with today's generation." This is also my belief, and I am even certain that the future will solely belong to the electronic press without any consolation for the "intimate character" of paper.
