The debate was part of La Trobe’s debate series, Ideas and Society, convened by Professor Robert Manne.

Hoping to work in print journalism in the future, I thought it was in my best interest to see where quality newspapers are headed. The seminar began with Professor Robert Manne questioning: ‘will our democracy be shifted without print?’

This thought has been circulating around for some time. With the increase of online media, the future of newspapers has seemed uncertain. To the contrary, Beecher explained in Tuesday’s seminar that the state of quality newspapers do not rely on the existence of ever growing technology.

As we have seen in the past, and will continue to see, new media does not eliminate traditional media but instead they have accumulated to produce the various media forms available today.

The Age’s aims. He also explained that Internet publications have slightly different agendas, they are about including more topics that readers request rather than what journalists think readers should know.

This provokes the question, is quality journalism being sacrificed for the takeover of the Internet?

Whether this is the case or not, Beecher made the point that there will always be a demand for quality and mainstream newsrooms. They provide the basis for other media to access information and have always had greater resources than other media forms.

While these ideas hope to keep quality newspapers running, we are never aware of what changes will happen in the media as soon as tomorrow or in the future.

Cass Savellis is a final year Bachelor of Journalism student and part of the upstart editorial team. She writes a blog and can be found on Twitter @csavellis.