This Christmas I gave my little brother a subscription for the Wall Street Journal. I figured that I had gained so much from using my subscription, even if it was only online, that John, who works in the financial industry would get even more out of it. John too does not have a car. He hoofs it to work via bus and foot, an oddity in Houston. What a perfect gift the WSJ in paper format would be for him.
Well, my brother, ten years younger, is also a millennial. He wanted me to nix the paper so that he could use the online version of the paper. Since that time I’ve been the beneficiary of my own generosity and have gotten a paper copy of the Journal at my house every morning.
I’ve read the WSJ for about five years. In all that time I never read the “Bookshelf” item on the Opinion Page. Keep in mind, I LIVE on the Opinion Page of the WSJ. Most of the book reviews I read when I only had the online version were through the links on the home page. Once I got the paper version, the difference between online reading and traditional reading became stark and clear in a way that I have never before or since experienced.
On the back side of the Opinion pages of the paper version is a daily article that is a book review. I’ve been getting the paper version of the past two months and during that time I have not missed an opportunity to read those reviews. This was a part of the Journal I never knew existed in the online version. Something for four or five years I didn’t know was there is now my favorite column. THIS is the most stark difference between the two media.
Paper lays everything out for you and forces the reader to weed out with your eyes that which you don’t want. The opposite is true of online media. Online you must search for what you want. It’s been startling to me every time I read that “Bookshelf” article in the paper that I’ve missed out of so much in the past few years.
It’s not as if I didn’t realize it was there, I’m sure my eyes glazed over the online “Bookshelf” every time I was on the Opinion Page. But when it is there, right in front of me, the entire article with a picture in the print Journal, it is impossible to miss, and for me, impossible not to read. This ability to see the whole without having to know what to look for is what I will miss with the coming e-reading revolution. That being said, it’s incumbent on us (web-designers and writers) to find new ways to direct readers to that content.
No comments:
Post a Comment