[MGP-Forum Announce] Sony starts selling the Soney eBook reader: $349.00

[Jane Stevens]

I'm not objecting to reading at all. But why put 1,000 words into  
text that work better as still photos with audio? Why try to explain  
how the Space Shuttle docks with the International Space Station when  
an animated graphic works better?  Check out Touching Hearts as a  
good example - http://www.heraldsun.com/heart -- and turn off popup  
blocker to watch...it's old, but classic multimedia. And there's a  
nine-part text series that ran in the newspaper. Guess which gets  
more hits? The better-told story (multimedia....which includes text).

Books are their own medium, and it took a while after the printing  
press was invented for books to emerge in their wonderful form: text  
on pages, front and back, enclosed in a cover, most a size that's  
mobile. Fiction, especially, will remain as it is. Much nonfiction  
can probably stand to lose some words to photos, video clips, audio.

We're entering a world of storytelling Zen: the story decides how it  
wants to be told. Sometimes video. Sometimes still photos. Sometimes  
audio. Sometimes graphics. Sometimes text. More than likely, some  
combo of all. And, for journalism, the story is linked to people who  
carry on the conversation and add to the story. Not elite at all.

On Sep 29, 2006, at 9:05 PM, tom stites wrote:

>> Subject: Re: [MGP-Forum Announce] Sony starts selling the Soney  
>> eBook reader:
>> $349.00
>>
>> they'll have to market to the over-50 crowd, the only group that
>> really wants to read newspapers. everyone under 30 wants to see,
>> hear, share, talk about, contribute to.......
>
> I fear that the myth that young adults don't care to read could  
> become true
> if the people who produce journalism act is if it is true.  There  
> is no
> shortage of evidence that this is a myth; the Harris Poll, for  
> example,
> finds a significantly higher incidence of GenXers reading national
> newspapers than in the general population.
>
> Lots of well-educated people also say that poor people don't like  
> to read,
> but there's no shortage of evidence to the contrary on this point,  
> as well.
> For example, Wal-Mart is the fourth largest retailer of books, after
> Borders, Barnes and Noble, and Amazon.  And sales of mass-market  
> paperbacks
> have been growing for years.
>
> For decades well-educated people have also asserted that people  
> won't read
> long stories in newspapers, especially working class people.  But  
> that's not
> true either. Donald Barlett's and James B. Steele's Philadelphia  
> Inquirer
> series, "America: What Went Wrong?", consumed at least two full  
> broadsheet
> pages a day for a week and squarely addressed the issues of working  
> people
> -- the people who supposedly won't read long stories (or, more  
> recently,
> supposedly won't read at all).  When the Barlett-Steele series  
> appeared the
> Inquirer's circulation shot up by 15,000 a day.  When the paper made
> reprints of the series available, the lines outside the Inquirer  
> building
> were so long the paper had to hire security guards to string velvet  
> ropes to
> keep the lines orderly.  The Inquirer couldn't produce the reprints  
> fast
> enough, and gave away more than 200,000 of them.  That was before  
> the series
> was repackaged as a book that went to No. 1 on the New York Times
> best-seller list and sold more than 650,000 copies.  The average  
> best-seller
> sells a little over 100,000 copies, indicating that A:WWW? Spilled  
> over from
> the usual middle-class book-buying crowd into people who don't buy  
> many
> books -- the folks that the myth says won't read.
>
> It's my deep belief that people of all ages and socioeconomic  
> strata will
> read eagerly if presented with articles that squarely address the  
> issues
> that affect them directly, articles that are meaningful and  
> relevant to
> their lives.  And there's plenty of evidence to support this belief.
>
> The real problem is that very few news organizations publish  
> articles for
> readers other than the affluent, middle-aged readers their advertisers
> crave.  This discarding of all but the affluent readers is a  
> journalistic
> disgrace and crisis of democracy.  The challenge facing us is to  
> find ways
> to bring quality journalism to everybody -- if we succeed, perhaps our
> enfeebled democracy will regain some of its strength.
>
> I addressed this topic more fully in my luncheon speech at the  
> Media Giraffe
> Summit in Amherst in July; the text is posted on the Center for  
> Citizen
> Journalism blog at
> http://citmedia.org/blog/2006/07/03/guest-posting-is-media- 
> performance-democ
> racys-critical-issue/ .
>
> Tom Stites
> Publisher, UU World magazine
> Unitarian Universalist Association
> 25 Beacon Street
> Boston, MA 02108
> tstites at uua.org
> 617-948-6504
> 617-742-7025 (fax)
>
> www.uuworld.org
> www.uua.org
>
>
>
>
>
>
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