Selling the Experience of Reading the News
With the exception of my father and a handful of others hungry to hang on to the nostalgia of breaking open the NY Times over an espresso and breakfast on Sunday mornings, everyone I know accesses their “need to know” news via the web—why pick up a paper when you have the news of the world in the palm of your hand and in many cases, for free?
Back when I used to read print newspapers, the aesthetics of the reading experience were really important and went so far as to determine which papers I favored over others. For example, the now-defunct Rocky Mountain News was my go-to read largely because it was printed magazine style without the “below the fold” aspect that the Denver Post employed and continues to employ. The NY Times carries with it both in print and reputation, the air of sophistication—it’s an old school, urban newspaper highly regarded for it’s vast coverage of news worldwide. There was always that certain self-importance one felt when sprawled over one of these papers in a coffee shop in the early hours of the day. The Wall Street Journal with its clever penciled renderings of the notable contributors echoed a similar thought: this was a publication for smart people.
The list goes on and on. Time and Newsweek were other publications I once read with a religious fervor until my life was swallowed up in the film industry. Either way, when I came back to reading the news, the platform was and remains totally different—blogs, Twitter, FB, and a plethora of other news sources have taken over the place in my life that news-specific publications once held. Again, the same factors come into play: page layout, site navigation, diversity of coverage, et cetera. In short, aesthetics.
The irony in this is that instead of focusing on what they’re delivering to readers, the newspapers have allowed themselves to become entirely enveloped in the crush of, “How do we get people to pay for content? How do we survive the move to digital?” The stereotypical layout found on most news sites today is columnar with a mash of bold headlines, images, and occasionally video. Some websites do this well. Some do not.
Case in point: Newsweek/Daily Beast versus Time. Layout is the same, but I’m more keen to read Newsweek than ever visit Time’s website. Why? They’ve copied Newsweek down to the colors, but chosen to put too much on the homepage in a serif font (which does not translate well online,) avoided sectioning in any identifiable way, and can you say, “Too much red?”
Newspapers, in the digital era, are no longer selling the news. They are selling the experience of reading the news.
The Art of Disconnect…
…or why I have neglected the old blog here for the last two months and quit Twitter.
Back in January, Arianna Huffington was interviewed by Prospect Magazine and made a comment about the need “to disengage from our 24/7 connectivity.” She went on to explain that constantly being locked into the rest of the world has hampered our “inner wisdom”. Why is this important?
For many of us, most of these connections are never fleshed out in physical life and most of our time is ticked away tied to our screens—whether they be that of laptops, desktops, cameras, or the computer/video/stereo/phone device in your pocket. I am guilty of this myself: as a writer, much of my time is spent looking at the glowing rectangle with its bluish glow casting shadows on the walls while I work into the late hours of the night. I spend equal amount of time burning out my corneas handling work for the studio and cranking through the wonders of academia. It’s enough to make your head explode.
If we never unhook ourselves from the constant stream of information, will there not come a time when we no longer distinguish between wholesome information and filler information—the digital equivalent of a home-cooked meal versus fast food? What if there is simply too much data to imbibe on a daily basis between the Crackberry and fifty million social platforms to glean from? Ironically enough, we get to a point wherein we actually feel guilty for taking time away from reading the blogs, checking the email, and tending to our online selves. How is it viable to feel guilty for pulling out of these things if we are then nurturing our physical lives and in-person relationships?
Life is more than a virtual thread connecting you to another person, another life. I quit Twitter a couple of months ago because it no longer added anything to my physical life. Snippets of jokes, anecdotes, and news links were great, but most of my information consumption is streamlined these days by way of Tumblr, Google Reader, and Facebook. More is not better when it comes to information—less is spectacular.
If we cultivate our tangible lives, we might not spend so much time logged in to our digital ones. We might spend more time writing books, getting outside, travelling, and having the conversations of which fragments usually end up on Facebook anyway.
Journalists the world over are struggling to cope with a social and mobile tsunami of ‘user generated content’, to use an increasingly inadequate phrase. Twitter and YouTube will overwhelm news organisations who can’t master their potential.
A common mistake for those seeking to cope with this profound disruption is to confuse technology with innovation. Algorithms, apps and search tools help make data useful but they can’t replace the value judgements at the core of journalism.
Genuine innovation requires a fundamental shift in how journalists think about their role in a changed world. To begin with, they need to get used to being ‘curators’; sorting news from the noise on the social web using smart new tools and good old fashioned reporting skills.
Source: soupsoup
Beautifully shot video of iconic blogger - Scott Schumann, aka, The Satorialist.
A beautiful example of why social media is what it is and at its very best. At the very foundation, it connects people. As Mr. Schumann says, it’s the moment and every moment that he shares with his world is, in turn, shared with the rest of us. You have a blogger whose story is being shared in a Youtube clip, which is now being shared via Tumblr.
Source: benjaminandhisblog
Privacy, social media, and Google
Sometimes we keep our social profiles separate for very valid reasons and social media platforms—or technology companies—shouldn’t circumvent those efforts as a means of upping their own social capital value or out of some need to be more “socially-connected.”
What I post and the reasons behind what I post to Twitter are entirely different than what I post to Facebook. What I post to this blog is not always something that I would write about for the paper. Why? Because I have different audiences on every platform and frankly, I have a need for some level of privacy in what has become a very public world. What a novel idea.
Privacy on many of these sites continues to be a point of discussion. Whether it’s utilizing a secured url for login pages on Facebook or Twitter or having the ability to turn off the friendly little cookies that allow you to comment via your Facebook page about articles, videos, and whatever other schlock you might be looking at, privacy is important. People don’t like their information being rifled through—no matter what’s its being used for or not being used for.
Google is the latest to initiate a new “social feature” without being upfront. I run a search on Google this evening and guess what pops up?
When signed into Google, the platform automatically searches for public profiles on social networks that might match yours and it does this without asking your permission to do so first. Doesn’t this sound a little bit like the passive privacy adjustments Facebook’s been crucified for in the past? My Twitter profile is public at this point, but I make a point of privatizing other profiles that I have for the purpose of filtering audiences. I’ve made a point of disallowing Google to keep track of my search history. I’ve now made a point of barring Google from searching for profiles to “connect” to my Google account. I did these things to maintain that minuscule level of privacy that I’d like to keep without having to completely take everything down.
This isn’t really so much about Google, though. This is about the fact that the concept of privacy has gone away. Not only is it not given most of the time, but increasingly it’s assumed that no one really wants any privacy. We know that we’ve given you our information. We’ve utilized the tools you’ve given us to keep confidential what we deem necessary. How dare you thumb your nose at us in order to get what you want. What happened to personal and professional ethics?