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

[Bob Stepno]

Great discussion... especially on a relaxed Saturday. I hope another 
thousand words (fair warning) aren't enough to kill the conversation, 
but I've been trying to sort out my own ideas on some of these issues 
and the stream of consciousness here will help.

Getting to journalism from the eBook reader topic -- Electronic books 
and electronic newspapers aren't the same thing. The book is linear (or 
has been, mostly), while newspapers have always been hypertextual -- 
linking chunks of information by putting them side by side on a page or 
adding a "see page 13" now and then, or using multi-deck heads and 
summary leads for folks in even more of a hurry.

My 50+year-old eyes have read a dozen books from a Palm Treo  or Palm 
TX screen without a problem. But I don't read much *news* that way. I 
appreciate Dave Winer's clean "river of news" (nytimesriver.com) 
approach to putting headlines and summaries on itty bitty screens, but 
the mechanics of scanning headlines and clicking links to stories, 
waiting for them, then viewing them in small chunks on a Palm or phone 
isn't for me. I'd rather have stories in context, with sidebars, 
datelines, photos other cues.

Sony's jacket-pocket size screen might be enough, if it can be kept 
free of intrusive ads (hardly likely), but I'd still look for a print 
edition (or a printer) to follow more complicated stories. That's me.

"How *do* we get young people to read the news?" is another question. 
I'm not sure putting it on a smaller screen is the answer, multimedia 
screen or not.

My over-50 crowd are the kids that grew up learning to read from the 
Sunday comics... and looking in the paper for their pictures from the 
Scout Jamboree or County Fair...  and listening to Mom tell Aunt Helen 
what Dear Abby and the kids' daily horoscopes said that morning... and 
(by junior high) delivering the paper for spending money... then (from 
high school age on) scanning the headlines to find out what happened 
yesterday, scanning the ads to see what's playing at the Bijou and 
whether anyone is selling a two-tone '57 Chevy or a blue MG-B.

That *was* yesterday: The newspaper landing with a "plop" on the 
doorstep, filling a variety of familiy "information needs," and then 
protecting the floor from paint (or puppy) drippings. The experience is 
still available, but kids who didn't grow up with it are hard to 
convert. Having the paper as a childhood memory helped bring me back to 
it after too-busy, too-distracted, too '60s, high school and college 
years.

For some, the transition involves putting down roots in a community, 
developing more interest in local taxes, road repairs, zoning cases, 
schools and sewage problems. Some more responsible citizens don't need 
as much of a push to take an interest in national politics, 
environmental issues, international affairs or all the 
consumer-lifestyle stuff in the paper.

Newspapers and the other media need to know what they do best, then go 
do it. Provide short bites online; provide full-course meals in print; 
supplement them with video, audio or animations when those are the best 
ways to tell the story... but have that online storytelling also point 
out the "added value" in the printed paper.

Tom mentioned Barlett's and Steele's Philadelphia Inquirer series, 
which reminded me of the Philly.com dialogue between the author and 
readers of the original "Black Hawk Down" series -- dialogue that added 
to the story before it became a best-seller book and movie, and 
multimedia that enhanced the online reading.  (Original archived at 
http://blackhawkdown.com)

Can an electronic edition be an effective marketing tool for a (maybe 
not-daily) print newspaper's in-depth projects? Those broadsheet --or 
even tabloid pages-- will always be easier to eyetrack across than a 
book-sized screen. No scrolling or hypertext link is as quick as a 
two-second flick of the eye back across a few columns when you want to 
clarify a second reference in a long story or to check a voting-results 
chart while reading an election story. Having a searchable copy of the 
same text online makes up for one of print's shortcomings. Giving the 
audience a choice of audio or video online can tell some stories 
better.

What should journalism educators be focusing on?

* Clear, concise writing -- not long rambling discourses like this big 
bite out of your e-mail reading time.

* Basic tools of the trade -- from the AP Stylebook to online research 
and digital editing.

* Basic civics -- how things work, along with convincing students that 
a democracy needs passionately independent watchdogs as well as 
passionate partisan voices.

* Choice -- recognizing strong points and weak points of print and 
digital media, how they can be complimentary, and how they have to 
innovate to make up for their weaknesses. Daily and weekly papers can't 
beat electronic media to breaking news, but they can devote resources 
to depth coverage, especially local and state governments and 
regionally powerful corporations. Online can be better at immediacy, 
and it can offer space to many diverse voices, including those prone to 
long rambling discourses.

For space-station docking, turn on the television or its live broadband 
Web incarnation for live video and an animated analysis. The paper, on 
the other hand, can run a two-foot-square graphic showing how all the 
parts fit together, with detailed captions and sidebars telling how 
much the thing cost, why it's important, and a full-page layout of crew 
members' biographies.

Perhaps journalism schools should not just be teaching journalists how 
to report and write -- they should be teaching "journalism 
appreciation" to the audience, including appreciation of the strengths 
of different media forms, along with healthy doses of both civics and 
"media literacy" or "critical thinking." That means getting 
universities to recognize three "journalism" tracks, not just 
professional training and academic research (media effects, law, 
history, public opinion etc.), but also a "liberal arts" or "semi-pro" 
minor filled with information for "the former 'audience'" of active and 
concerned readers and viewers, part of a pro/am conversation between 
full-time journalists and those who have other ways of making a living, 
but still see the need for an informed public.

So how do we get a younger generation into the tent at 21 if their 
parents didn't bring them up making the association between newspapers 
and "being informed"? "People don't read anymore" is a set of different 
myths, easily disproved by best-seller statistics, but that's hard to 
translate into stories about your local government. Maybe newspapers 
should enlist Harry Potter as a paperboy, and get him to deliver 
in-depth non-fiction at the same time, along with briefer local state 
and national news.

Damn, I wish I'd known when I started this that I was going to finish 
with "It'll take a magician."

Onward.

Bob Stepno
http://stepno.com
http://couranteer.com

On Sep 30, 2006, at 7:57 AM, tom stites wrote:

> > . . . 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?
>
>  And I'm not objecting to multimedia.  My point of my post was to 
> assert that lots of people would read journalism if it were meaningful 
> to them, that reading is not only for educated people who are not 
> young.
>
>  But reading does have deep value to democracy, which is what I care 
> about most -- without it there will be no meaningful journalism for 
> anybody, text, video, or multimedia.  
>          <snip>