Nowadays, media's future is increasingly becoming the focus of professors' and students' concern around the globe. This essay will discuss this topic on three different aspects.

Firstly, will the traditional media be replaced in the future?

In my opinion, the word 'replace' is too strong here. It's a common sense that "everything in existence is reasonable". Traditional media has a great group of potential audiences. Their cultural standard, reading preference and lifestyle influence their reading choice. In addition, it's irreplaceable for the traditional media because of its depth reporting and because it's easy to preserve. So, I prefer to use the word 'transform' to describe the future of the traditional media. I think the traditional media will be changed by the new media in the future. As we all know, many interactive news media go into depth on all kinds of news that receive only a minute or two on television or a few paragraphs in a newspaper. The digital media is not limited by the time restraints of broadcast news or the space limitation of the printed media. So it will be a tendency in the future that new media will transform journalism and traditional media must be integrated by the digital media.

Secondly, what are the advantages and development bottlenecks of the digital media?

John V.Pavlik wrote: 'networked news can be interactive, on-demand and customizable; it can incorporate new combinations of text, images, moving images and sound; it can build new communities based on shared interests and concerns; it has the almost unlimited space to offer levels of reportorial depth, texture and context that are impossible in any other medium'---It seems that the digital media have all the advantages of the prior medias. But I have to point out that the digital media has its potential as well as many pitfalls. As we all know, the digital media brings everyone the freedom to become the 'creator'and 'disseminator' of information. Compared with the traditional media, it lacks of the essential censorship. That's a double-edged sword for the digital media's future: on one hand, it can give the citizens more freedom; on the other hand, it can also bring chaos to the society because many news and info in the digital media is dubious and mislesding. On the contrary, the world's best news meida--newspapers, televisions and radio--are more reliable in the audience's eyes. So, how to improve its reliability and authoritativeness is a burning question for the digital media.

Finally, I want to talk about the integration of the traditional media and the digital media in the future.

Through the analysis, we can find that the traditional media and the digital media are more complementary than competitive. That's my opinion on the future of the media: the new style greets the old style; the traditional integrate with the digital. We can already see that almost every traditional medium has its web site to supplement its limited info and space on a newspaper or on the TV. It's just the beginning. In my eyes, the digital media may become a platform for all the traditional media in the future, and, we will see it.

(By Xiao Chenyang Editor: Cui Xuyan)