Yep, I’m here defending the value – not just the past – of self curated news consumption
I think it would truly benefit our industry (journalism), as well as what should be in my opinion a hallmark of our society (being an informed one) if more newspapers chose The New York Times online model. Its layout captures the ergonomic integrity of the scanning read (allowing the reader to make choices and to also get a quick look at what’s happening in the world).
Easy to see without scrolling or clicking – and the price, quite frankly, is legit. I must admit I prefer (dare I say long for) the tactile experience of the newspaper and its ‘slow read’, requiring a chosen pace of concentration and the possibility of either “me time” (slower read) or “be time” (be informed with a scan of leads (ledes) and headlines.
I understand recent generations that don’t have that wired in, so maybe, just maybe, the behavioral science that has long showed why newspaper layouts were (are) successful in allowing the scans and reading choice that it readily offers, could/would be the model to keep the daily in cities where the paper is struggling alive.
I’m removed from researching or accessing research into this stuff, which was something I could tap into when working at University of Oklahoma’s Gaylord College (or the other universities I worked at). When I was teaching I developed, as an offshoot of lessons provided to me by much more experienced educators, a semester long requirement to read hard copy.
At Oklahoma, we had access to free NYT and Daily Oklahoman print editions available to students daily. I liked to say to my students that they should grab a copy of the Times, stick it in their backpack with the paper peaking out. People dig smart people; chicks dig smart guys; guys dig smart chicks; people dig smart people.
Then, just for show if that’s all you have, I would say, use it as your coaster for morning coffee (or for this generation, your Mountain Dew, etc.). Sooner or later, you may find yourself looking away from that tiny phone to the broadsheet, checking out the headlines, reading the ledes and, all of a sudden, finding your way deeper into stories at your pace. No ac outlet needed.
The assignment we would use as a starting point for discussion was multi-fold. Each week, consume these things: 1) your student newspaper, however it is produced, 2) the hard copy, print edition of a weekend major local paper, be it the Daily Oklahoman, the now-defunct Birmingham News (when I taught at Auburn), The NY Times, the Chicago Trib, the OC Register, the LA Times or whatever you could get your hands on and afford, 3) a legitimate online news outlet, it could be anything from Slate to Yahoo to an online edition of those local papers or a local TV station, but one that had more than opinions and was not an agenda-driven site, (I let them make the arguments, but really wanted to avoid “propaganda”), 4) and document a certain number of articles in a “scrapbook” for the final project.
The latter is an arcane form, right? Please chuckle. But I feel taking the time to collect the studies and to consider what stories attracted a student at age 20 might be interesting to look back at many years later. A good, old-fashioned time capsule. The exercise gave us a chance to talk any day about the things people saw as worthy of their own choices to be informed, and I stand by it as a successful tool. If I teach again, I’ll try some form of it.
In a career spent mostly in broadcast, I never liked the idea of separation between the integrity/value/seriousness perceived by many in the early days of my career in terms of print vs. broadcast. That has seemingly passed to a degree, but I fear the bean counters have, instead of promoting the written, daily profession that is vital to our society, have forced papers to “dumb it down”, laying people off in record numbers, shuttering shops, more and more in favor of writing either churned out by an algorithm or spewed out by an inexperienced and identity-driven practitioner. A practitioner who understands and respects the complexities of a community.
I am on the side of my journalistic colleagues trying to do the important work that our society needs as daily news writers and investigative professionals. We need online outlets (including those produced by TV news outlets like the one I work at now) that allow choices not based on algorithms alone, and not based on a singular choice of the scroll. Or in the case of the Omaha World Herald, one of the most respected papers for decades in the midwest, not based on a football team. Love the Huskers and their fans (you know I’m a sports guy), but there is important, responsible journalism being pushed aside, jobs being downsized and work of generations of talented, educated, experienced professional journalists being pushed aside for a style I can only call “extended headline writing”… and “low hanging fruit.”
And I need something in my hand that doesn’t require electricity. I may be a relic, but human history is chronicled by relics.
Keep newspapers alive. Protect the work that serves as a watchdog for our society, a reflection of individual communities and a place of trust. Yep, I’d like to see us do a better job of that in local TV news as well, but right now… I want to take a minute to enjoy my Sunday Times.
Postcards from The Web 