Print vs. Online: The ways in which old-fashioned newspapers still trump online newspapers. [slate.com] – Jack Shafer recounts his rejection of and then ultimate return to consuming the news in good olde print. For him, attention to and retention of the news is much improved. Our old friends tangibility and experience exert their influence on him as well. Recent research seems to support his experiences. How might newspapers create real value out of this burgeoning new respect for the medium? There might be something to Shafer’s sarcastic idea about having his carrier hand-deliver his digital content with cues to the familiar physical form. There’s a little bit of a buzz lately about hybrid digital/physical delivery systems, like the recent Phoenix Down album-delivery system on a sweet flash drive, noted below.
I started missing the blue Times bag on my lawn and the glossy goodness of the Sunday magazine. Perhaps if I could have gotten my carrier to toss a blue-bagged computer preloaded with the Times Reader onto my lawn every morning, I could have survived. But no. What I really found myself missing was the news. Even though I spent ample time clicking through the Times website and the Reader, I quickly determined that I wasn’t recalling as much of the newspaper as I should be. Going electronic had punished my powers of retention. I also noticed that I was unintentionally ignoring a slew of worthy stories…My anecdotal findings about print’s superiority were seconded earlier this month by an academic study…The researchers found that the print folks “remember significantly more news stories than online news readers”; that print readers “remembered significantly more topics than online newsreaders”; and that print readers remembered “more main points of news stories.” When it came to recalling headlines, print and online readers finished in a draw… Newspapers are less distracting—as anybody who has endured an annoying online ad while reading a news story on the Web knows. Also, and I’m channeling the paper a little bit here, by virtue of habit and culture a newspaper commands a different sort of respect, engagement, and focus from readers.
Besides eliminating clutter, one of our favorite upshots of the post-CD era is the micro-movement of creative USB stick design. We’ve seen Doc Martens, surfboards and Red Stripe bottles among other adorable forms for the little devices, so it’s somewhat surprising that more bands haven’t paired sound and vision like Junk Science and Scott Thorough recently did by releasing their new album Phoenix Down on a mini-hard drive. Loaded with the tracks, as well as instrumentals, a cappella versions and a bonus folder of remixes and more, the limited-edition flash drive is a soft-rubber pixelated feather—a fitting mix of nature and digital for their 8-bit-heavy sound and lyrics like “the future’s pixelated.”
Tags: digital, flash drive, memory, newspapers, phoenix down, print, quickies, reading, tangible
I’m not sure if the tangible-as-premium is a good thing or a bad thing if we want to keep the old skool ways around. Will print subscriptions to newspapers be a freebie they toss in when you buy the digital version? Or will it be an exclusive classic version that you pay double for? The whole value proposition and the underlying story that carries that value seem to be played with. I guess you get what you can get for it.
BTW, I am not saying they are necessarily wrong but it sure made me twitch to read a flash drive described as a hard drive. Those terms, to me, refer to the underlying technology, not the application. Stupid, huh?
Comment by Steve Portigal 08.22.11 @ 7:02 pmTangible-as-premium is just one manifestation I suppose. There could be elements of the physical (nostalgic?) experience of getting a newspaper to leverage that are specifically not a newspaper. Select and deliver some elements digitally, some physically. For the NY Times, it could be… Newspaper: digital. Magazine: physical. Newspaper: daily/hourly/by-the-minute. Magazine: weekly/monthly/quarterly. We live on and off-line after all, and there are affordances to each. We’re beginning to understand these better the more we live in this world. Some if this is probably individual preference, but research like the work mentioned in the Slate article suggests there are real reasons to keep both around. The industry is not addressing these opportunities very creatively yet.
Comment by Julie Norvaisas 08.24.11 @ 9:44 amMcSweeney’s and the SF Chron teamed up to produce a special book-like issue of the newspaper (that may be an inappropriate comparison but anyway, something special, premium) they called Panorama. I ordered it right away because that seems like something I want to support. Then, I had a million hassles getting my copy (I had to swap several voice mails with the Chron just to get it delivered) which kinda takes away the delight.
Most tragically, it’s this huge stack of stuff that has sat, unread, in the livingroom, for a year, maybe even longer. Someday I’ll get to it. Too much content!
http://www.sfgate.com/panorama/
Comment by Steve Portigal 08.24.11 @ 10:27 am