Newspapers Should Match Reader’s Attention Span: Short!

soundbite

by Glynnis MacNicol | 1:07 pm, January 6th, 2010

» 4 comments

“One reason seekers of news are abandoning print newspapers for the Internet has nothing directly to do with technology. It’s that newspaper articles are too long. On the Internet, news articles get to the point. Newspaper writing, by contrast, is encrusted with conventions that don’t add to your understanding of the news.”

Michael Kinsley’s piece in the upcoming issue of The Atlantic has been making the Internet rounds this week. In it Kinsley gives a bit of a how-to journalism lesson (with examples!) arguing that the part of the problem newspapers are facing has nothing to do with plummeting ad sales or the print platform, it’s simply that articles are too long. Get to the point people! Enough with the purple prose, people just want to know what’s going on:

Once upon a time, this unnecessary stuff was considered an advance over dry news reporting: don’t just tell the story; tell the reader what it means. But providing “context,” as it was known, has become an invitation to hype. In this case, it’s the lowest form of hype — it’s horse-race hype — which actually diminishes a story rather than enhancing it.

The reality of course is that we don’t need commentary in our news reports because we have the blogosphere. The irony being as Kinsley points out “the current financial crisis, The New York Times and other papers seem to have given reporters more leeway than ever before to express their opinions directly.” Also cable news. Will the public eventually hit a tipping point when people get so exhausted by the cacophony of opinions we return to the world of hard news? (No doubt CNN is hoping so!) In the meantime newspapers, at little less conversation, a little more action.

Michael Kinsley, The Atlantic, The New York Times, The State of Journalism

http://www.sailrabbits.com Magister

If newspapers would like to abandon their current readers in hopes that they might replace them with others, then by all means, they should take Kinsley’s advice.

Newspapers give depth to a story. They provide context, background and full quotes. Sure it may be old-fashioned, but when something happens, you watch it on television, you may watch it recapped at 6:30 and the next day, you look at a newspaper to get the rest of the story.

I mean (and based only on the above quote), it makes absolutely no sense for a newspaper to file a print version of a television treatment. They serve two different functions and right now, though some of their current problems are due to leveraged buyouts and the stock market in general, they’re just having pains transferring their old product to new media.

Heck, a website may be cheap to produce, but a ranking of those doing any type of “news” or “current events” site profitably without some type of subsidization is so short, it may not even list one.
http://www.sailrabbits.com Magister

OK – Now that the link has been added (I sometimes have to edit the back in, so I fully understand), but…

Now that I’ve ready the story, perhaps Mr. Kinsley should take his own advice.
Check It

M Kinsley, wrong again, at least in terms of the bigger picture.

Understanding and knowledge of the issues is not a sound bite. More opinionating online, and less hard news being covered, and read, is one of the things leading to the dumbing down of America. It is easy to mislead in shorter, segments. Who knows anything about climate change, for instance? Few articles are in depth, particularly in comparison to all the rhetoric, and misleading little factoids which are totally distored or require knowledge of the broader issue and scientific basis to have any meaning, but which are constantly used to provoke or promote a false view.

Op-eds that are now more and more misleading, are being promulgated routinely on what was once our nation’s leading newspapers. Here’s some facts on climate change that it is pretty clear a lot of American’s don’t know,, in contrast to the wild assertions promoted in yet another of these op-eds as an example of how this sound biting, or something, is leading to a dumbing down and often incorrect version of the information we are often receiving.
Nachi

What a brilliant detuction! Yethir,these internet news watchers are just filled to the brim with – information. The fact is: they’re too stupid and short-sighted to read a newspaper. They have sportsBoy and games to play instead. The great Murcuhn intellect at work!! Dumbest country in the Free World. And damned proud of it.