Thomas Washington's piece, "Searchers, not readers, on overload," poses an interesting question. It seems to be common knowledge that people do not read as much as they did 15-20 years ago.
But Washington argues that this is not entirely a negative progression. People actually read more than they ever have each day, it's just in bits and pieces. Washington quotes Pulitzer-Prize winning biographer Stacy Schiff as saying, "Surely we have never read, or written so many words a day. Yet increasingly we deal in atomized bits of information, the hors d'oeuvres of education."
The question would be, is it satisfactory that we're only eating the appetizers and not the main course?
I'd argue that the internet -- Google in particular -- has broadened our capabilities to the point where we need to accept this as fact, whether it's good or not. Our choices for reading at the click of a mouse have increased exponentially over the past several years and by nature we have become searchers, not readers.
There is almost no chance that we can avert young readers from scanning over more information rather than finding the deeper meaning of printed words, so we should focus on making sure they read pieces that are constructive. Less gossip and more news. Hopefully that is not just a pipe dream.
The most noticeable spawn from this age of attention defect driven news consumption may be blogs. People not only like to read news pieces that are more opinionated -- possibly towards their own views -- but ones that they can get instantaneously. Perhaps they can even comment their own sentiments immediately, via the comment/reaction section that exists on most blogs. And has the proliferation of blogs effectively killed traditional print journalism.
Here is a spirited debate between Buzz Bissinger, the award winning author of "Friday Night Lights, and Will Leitch, the founder of Deadspin.com, a popular online sports blog with multiple contributors. It's an interesting round-table on whether or not the inevitable shift towards blog-esque news coverage is positive or detrimental to the evolving business of journalism. I'm not sure why Cleveland Browns wide-receiver was even there. His agent might as well have been there as he really offers nothing of substance to the debate. It's a little lengthy and contains some profanity, but is well worth viewing for anyone who blogs or is interested in journalism.
But Washington argues that this is not entirely a negative progression. People actually read more than they ever have each day, it's just in bits and pieces. Washington quotes Pulitzer-Prize winning biographer Stacy Schiff as saying, "Surely we have never read, or written so many words a day. Yet increasingly we deal in atomized bits of information, the hors d'oeuvres of education."
The question would be, is it satisfactory that we're only eating the appetizers and not the main course?
I'd argue that the internet -- Google in particular -- has broadened our capabilities to the point where we need to accept this as fact, whether it's good or not. Our choices for reading at the click of a mouse have increased exponentially over the past several years and by nature we have become searchers, not readers.
There is almost no chance that we can avert young readers from scanning over more information rather than finding the deeper meaning of printed words, so we should focus on making sure they read pieces that are constructive. Less gossip and more news. Hopefully that is not just a pipe dream.
The most noticeable spawn from this age of attention defect driven news consumption may be blogs. People not only like to read news pieces that are more opinionated -- possibly towards their own views -- but ones that they can get instantaneously. Perhaps they can even comment their own sentiments immediately, via the comment/reaction section that exists on most blogs. And has the proliferation of blogs effectively killed traditional print journalism.
Here is a spirited debate between Buzz Bissinger, the award winning author of "Friday Night Lights, and Will Leitch, the founder of Deadspin.com, a popular online sports blog with multiple contributors. It's an interesting round-table on whether or not the inevitable shift towards blog-esque news coverage is positive or detrimental to the evolving business of journalism. I'm not sure why Cleveland Browns wide-receiver was even there. His agent might as well have been there as he really offers nothing of substance to the debate. It's a little lengthy and contains some profanity, but is well worth viewing for anyone who blogs or is interested in journalism.
1 comment:
And do you see the relevance to blogging as opposed to traditional and long-form print journalism?
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