Rod Dreher

Thank You, Sir, May I Have Another

An Online Vs. Print Epiphany

By Rod Dreher • November 30, 2012, 11:03 AM

Yesterday I mentioned in this space how I had stumbled across Ann Patchett’s wonderful Atlantic piece about indie bookselling after a wi-fi outage forced me to do what I never do: pick up the print magazine, to which I subscribe, and read it, instead of reading the Atlantic through its website, which I visit several times daily.

It happened again last night, during the wi-fi outage, with Jeffrey Goldberg’s excellent and provocative Atlantic essay on gun control — more on which in a moment; save your commentary on it on for the subsequent thread. Again, it somehow feels important to say that I probably wouldn’t have read it if I had not seen it in the traditional magazine. For one thing, I don’t really care about the gun control issue, so I probably would not have clicked on the Atlantic‘s web headline. For another, the fact that there’s always something narrowly tailored to one’s own interests available on the web makes it even more likely that I would have skipped Goldberg’s essay in favor of something more in tune with my preferences. Encountering it in the print format made me read it … and I’m so glad that I did.

Incidentally, I’m also a subscriber to The New Yorker, which I typically read on my iPad, downloaded on Mondays (the print version arrives later in the week, by which time I’ve already gone through that issue). You have to read the NYer on your iPad as if it were a magazine. I mean, you can jump around by following links in the table of contents, but the way it’s formatted encourages you to read it in the traditional linear way. This is great, because it makes me consider and read pieces that I probably wouldn’t have clicked on if presented only as a hyperlink.

Funny, but when I subscribed to the print edition of The New York Times, instead of to the web-only edition, I was better informed — and for the same reason. I’m almost never going to read a Times sports story online, unless it’s highly promoted, because I don’t really care about sports. I read sports stories fairly often in the print edition, because I would at least look at the cover of the sports section. Same with fashion stories in the Times. I practically never read them in the online version, but I always at least looked at the section in the print product.

There’s a lesson here for a certain kind of reader, which is to say, for readers like me. Over to you, Alan Jacobs; I need you to lay it out for me, in that way that you do.

Posted in Media. Tagged Ann Patchett, Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, New York Times, New Yorker.

9 Responses to An Online Vs. Print Epiphany

Lord Karth says:

November 30, 2012 at 11:44 am

Print publications have a singular advantage in this regard, Mr. Dreher; a magazine/book/newspaper has all the information in one place. This makes it very easy for the reader to go from piece to piece; the cost of accessing a new article is very low.

In addition, the information has already been “selected” for the reader. There is no need to go to Google or some other search engine to seek the information out, which further reduces the “cost” of access.

A reading society will tend to be a more widely knowledgeable society, for this very reason. A computer-oriented culture will be superficially knowledgeable, but the level of that knowledge will be both shallow and tending towards the recent.

I commend to your attention I. Asimov’s “The Feeling of Power” to describe what may well be the coming state of “literacy” in so-called “advanced” societies. Said story can make for somewhat harrowing reading, in an unobtrusive sort of way.

Your servant,

Lord Karth
MBunge says:

November 30, 2012 at 1:28 pm

Your experience falls 100% into what I’ve always suspected about online over print. On the plus side, there’s more of what you want more easily available. On the down side, there’s a terrible inclination for your interests to never stray outside what you immediately want.

Mike
Fr Bill says:

November 30, 2012 at 2:43 pm

My youngest daughter reports that most of the children in her daughter’s Kindergarten class do not know what to do with a book. They simply are unfamiliar with the item.
David B says:

November 30, 2012 at 5:02 pm

It is interesting that Neil Postman should have come up in the blog a couple days ago, and now these posts about serendipitous discoveries in print media. Postman co-authored a book with Steve Powers called How to Watch TV News. In it, they point out that in newspapers (or magazines) for each diverse item that is included, they increase their readership. But with a TV broadcast, the opposite is generally true. The pressure is on to make sure every single item will be at least marginally interesting to everyone who might be watching. Hence the complaints about “dumbing down” or “lowest common denominator.”

Now, clearly websites are different in that they can also aggregate lots of different articles and they don’t force you sit through a half-hour “stream” of material like a TV newscast does. But I think there are other issues, such as how hard it is to truly just “browse” the web version of a magazine. I remember in the pre-Internet days how I would sit down in a library branch with a little stack of magazines and methodically work my way through each. I wouldn’t read every page, but I would at least look at every article, including the short book reviews and letters to the editor. These days I’m likely to find an article because of Arts & Letters Daily or a similar site, and then I *might* click on one or two articles that are displayed in a sidebar at the magazine’s site. This is still nothing like working your way through a magazine cover to cover.

I would also say, going back to Postman’s point on TV news, that there is a similar though not identical pressure on web-based news to go for the lowest common denominator because of the need to get you to “click through” to an article. So we find screaming headlines and startling photographs on Huffington Post for instance.
scottinnj says:

November 30, 2012 at 5:02 pm

This is something I’ve noticed as well I tend just to read Mr Dreher and Mr Larison here. Will put the TAC print edition on my list for Santa!
Kenneth J. Wolfe says:

November 30, 2012 at 5:33 pm

With more and more people relying on Google News alerts for keywords they’re already interested in, combined with conservatives reading only conservative websites and liberals only reading only liberal websites, we are quickly becoming self-enclosed.

I wish more Americans would subscribe to several print publications and at least flip through them each day. They might just stumble upon something they weren’t already convinced they knew.
Joe Carter says:

November 30, 2012 at 5:42 pm

Funny, but when I subscribed to the print edition of The New York Times, instead of to the web-only edition, I was better informed — and for the same reason.

Let me offer some friendly pushback: I suspect you were not actually “better informed” by being forced to read the sports or fashion page. To be truly informed, you’d need to put that information in some context. But since those topics weren’t relevant to your interests, you probably don’t have a larger context to put them in. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

Before the advent of the Internet, everyone had to rely on newspaper and magazine editors to tell them what they should care about. Now, people can structure their own newspapers and magazines with an RSS reader.

Of course some people need the editorial selection function that only an outside editor can provide. But I suspect that you aren’t like that. Indeed, you know as well as anyone that most editors pick stories based on what interest them rather than what is really interesting in the world.

So why should you feel that you are missing out because you are relying on your own editorial judgment—and the judgment of bloggers, et al., who point you to stories— rather than some unknown magazine editor? Sure, there will be articles that you sometimes miss out on by this process. But overall, you’ll be better informed because you’re screening out more “noise” than people were able to do in the age when the only screeners were newspaper and magazine editors.
Dan Davis says:

November 30, 2012 at 7:58 pm

As a lifelong magazine reader and thumber I get what everybody is talking about. But as an “Internet worm”, I also make many discoveries by following links, and then links within those links, and find things I never would have even known to look for just sitting trying to think of something to enter in a search bar. It’s different from the world of print, but analogous in its own way to browsing bookshelves and magazine racks.
EliteCommInc. says:

December 2, 2012 at 7:24 am

I wonder if bookcase manufacturer’s are feeling the pinch? I think something else happened in 2003, when news outlets begaan a constant barage of inline references. It was subtle, but there was immediate sinking inside, tht some fundamental change in the informational world — and that change has not been good.

When I opted to receive a prestigious newspaper a while ago. For all of it’s high regad — the read just lacked the quality I had hoped because of constant references to online print.

The quality of print is that it’s tangibility of intellectual mulling. I can underline, highlight, comment, reread, and until recently, knew that the witer’s credibility was linked to a long list of reference, for additional reading.

The internet is destroying the preciousness of information – in my view – a place where any unsubstantiated research ca slung in amongst serious study.

I don’t know, maybe it’s just adjusting to the new paradigm but I still buy books, and Wikipedia and all other pedia are off limits for research..