Agreement question

[Dodi Schultz]

Bethany Dumas notes:

  >> << The word *media* is--rightly--used these days to refer to those
  >> disseminating the news, since "press" suggests strictly print.
(Smarter
  >> PR people have long used "news release" rather than "press release.")
>>

And asks:

  >> Interesting comment - are you suggesting that newspapers do not
  >> disseminate news? Or perhaps you mean that newspaper disseminate news
  >> only in print? But what about online versions of newspapers? Are they,
  >> today, still newspapers?

No, I am saying that newspapers constitute a subclass of those instruments
disseminating news.

Yes, newspapers--those things sold on newsstands, made of
paper--disseminate news only in print. Or more specifically, "the press"
suggests news carriers that are created, um, on a *press*. The word *media*
is more general and includes radio, television, the Internet....

Online versions of newspapers? No, they're not newspapers (as I would
define the word). Sometimes they're online versions of the newspapers
issued by their parent organizations. Sometimes they are not, and the
online Gazette or Journal or Times may have stories that won't appear in
the print parent until the next day or won't appear in the print edition at
all. (And vice versa.)

--Dodi Schultz