After new media turned the old-media world upside down, a couple of digital hipsters tilted their heads and gave analog a second look.
Ben Terrett and Russell Davies, of the European design firm Really Interesting Group (RIG), spoke this month in Boston at the Razorfish agency’s client summit. They were discussing their venture, Newspaper Club.
Their goal is to move “past digital infatuation and analog nostalgia” and into “the post-digital world.” They want us to recall the power of physical contact with tangible things, and to use the right tools for the right purposes. A friend had aggregated various readings from the Web into a book titled “Things I Would Rather Read on Paper.” The RIG boys saw this and realized computer screens are a “really terrible way to read,” and books and newspapers are “a fantastic technology for reading.”
They wondered about a friend’s blog post. It had generated a lot of buzz in their circle. And yet, at 8,000 words, they wondered if anyone had actually read it on the computer screen.
They discovered that their friend’s blog post would fit on a mere four tabloid newspaper pages and appeared far less intimidating in that format.
(This concentration of information per newspaper column inch makes me recall an old Walter Cronkite quote, that a nightly newscast is no more than a headline scan of a newspaper’s front page. And a search for that quote just now led me to this wonderful little article by Uncle Walt, “How to Read a Newspaper”
Anyway, they packaged all their friends’ best work on the Web and printed 1,000 copies of something titled “Things Our Friends Have Written on the Internet 2008.” Every copy got snatched up. It was “magical,” they said, to see one’s blog post in ink-and-paper form.
They then created Newspaper Club in the U.K., with a tongue-in-cheek motto: “We have broken your business, now we want your machines.” Newspaper Club helps customers use idle press capacity to print student projects, wedding photo packages, you name it. They even printed a project for Wired magazine. They have VC backing and plan to open shop soon in the States.
As one of them says in their presentation to Razorfish (and if you like British humor, you’ll like these guys), most of the Internet feels like, “We’re inventing things to solve the problem that the last thing we invented caused.” It’s time, they say, to question the conventions of the computer screen. In a digital age, digital things are common – physical things are special.
This is all about the physical medium of the newspaper, obviously, and not about the journalism a printed page contains. Still, it’s a what’s-old-is-new-again moment.
As a newspaperman, I guess I should be mad that a couple of uber-hip Europeans had this too-late-for-many appreciation for the qualities of this thing – oh, so NOW you get it, do you? But I’m actually heartened. It shows there are many ways for old and new media to work side by side, in what the RIG guys call “a digital/analog mash-up.”
This article resonated with me—demonstrating that there are many ways for old and new media to work side by side, in what the RIG guys call “a digital/analog mash-up.” After receiving a morning paper for many years from a local news outlet that is now exclusively online (and now working for that news outlet), one can’t help questioning how well the old and new forms of media can work together. When thinking about how the old newspaper business model centered around advertising on newsprint, it’s interesting to see how this revenue-generator has been eclipsed by search-based advertising. I know that search-based advertising is significantly more profitable than the graphic advertising surrounding the news content.
This whole post-digital movement is a curious thing indeed. I whole heartedly agree with the RIG guys as I prefer print reading to a computer screen. But I wonder if this is part of a bigger post-modern movement where children of the digital age find a nostalgia for the relics of the 20th century?
I see a dramatic increase in people becoming more self sufficient or just generally valuing DIY projects and lifestyles: urban farming, home-brewers, knitters, urban chicken co-ops, and a general upsurge in valuing handmade and craft culture.
Maybe this “mash-up” is the wave of the future where nostalgia meets efficiency.
The anecdote about “did anyone actually READ an 8,000 word blog post on the computer” hit home for me, for sure. When I used to advise clients about how to blog effectively (in a past job) we hammered into them the idea that people read differently online. They skim and scan, so keep your paragraphs short and your blog posts to under 500 words at most. I often hear from friends that they are more likely to read blogs with lots of pictures rather than all text. So the idea that people are more willing to read longer text if it is printed out rather than on a screen is an interesting one.
But doesn’t the success of devices like the Kindle challenge that assertion? If it were all about the physicality of actual pages, wouldn’t digital readers fail? Or is it sufficiently physical enough that they are book-sized and can be held in your hands, unlike a laptop? The idea that, “In a digital age, digital things are common – physical things are special” seems to me to speak to a desire to bring together, as Betsy said, a mix of nostalgia and efficiency, the ease of online combined with the familiarity of traditional tools and objects.
Lisa, I might have a perspective on nostalgia/efficiency, since newspaper editing, wire sorting, etc., has been conducted on a computer screen (mainframe terminal, and later PC) throughout my almost-30-year career. I’ve probably been “reading digitally” longer than most people.
These guys are right, it is a very different way to read/see/comprehend. My friend Karen Cater, the copy-desk chief at The Times, recently had to make a budget case for why aging full-page proofers needed to be replaced. These machines are expensive, so why couldn’t we just proofread pages on a WYSIWIG page preview onscreen, she was asked. But anyone who has done proofreading can attest that your perception of the words and the overall context of the page is much different on paper than onscreen.
Plus there’s the portability of paper, the ease of use, and the context of a page layout of words, pictures and headlines working together that is quite different from packaging you see online.
The guys in this presentation talked about a deeper connection/understanding that comes from actually touching a tangible thing. They showed a film clip of Richard Dreyfuss building the model of Devil’s Tower in “Close Encounters.” Because he built the model in three dimensions, they said, he knew a way to get around the mountain, in a way that those who merely sketched it didn’t. That was the reason, they pointed out, that he “got to meet the aliens.”
This post reminds me a lot of Edward Tufte’s arguments for paper printing. In “Beautiful Evidence” he talks about how the printed word is the best way for our eyes to view information and mentions research that shows the human mind can process and retain information better if a presenter uses physical, written copies and speech rather than computer slides. I wonder if this will hold true for coming generations. The way we learn is being monumentally redesigned by digital media.
I’m also reminded of a few in-class discussions I had the pleasure of taking part in regarding nostalgia for “old media.” It seems that most media, when its function is usurped by a new tool, becomes more “special” and rarefied. For example, receiving a handwritten love letter would be considered extremely romantic and provoke a deeper level of feeling these days than receiving a text stating “i <3 u." Email is quickly becoming a service used mainly in a professional/business setting now that text messaging is a primary means of personal communication. It now seems that printed news is making a similar transition.
I worked for new media, and I have every reason to believe it will overwelmingly turns down traditional earned media.
But, I am nostalgia. Two sentences resonated with me in this post:
-”They want us to recall the power of physical contact with tangible things.”
-” In a digital age, digital things are common – physical things are special.”
Bombarded with the buzz on new media, we just miss the quiet and undistracted way of reading, watching and listening. Some people have the experience than content on a newspaper will be memorized for longer time than on a screen.
But I agree with the author that old and new media can and should work side by side. This is why people come up with the idea to put the web post to prints. The old and new medias have different features, say thick and fast for new media, deep for print, serving audience quite well with different media functionalities. They should hold their own ground, while at the same time integrate for a better purpose.
In this sense, I should unsay what I put in the beginning, new media is not “turning down” old media, but push it to carry forward the feature in a new perspective.
Although it isn’t journalism, an interesting parallel comes with the popularity of ‘I can haz cheezburger’ books. The website drives the content, yet the company seems to make some/most(?) of its money from their books and other merchandise.
I have a passion for good journalism, but I really like the ease of reading the content online. So I want newspapers to find a business model that keeps them in business while satisfying both sets of readers. I hope the RIG boys are on to something!
Super news for those who yearn to hold a newspaper or magazine and who still like to judge a book by its (hard) cover: these artifacts are not going anywhere.
They may fold by the dozens in a capitalistic society, but I recall as a college student 25 years ago all the buzz about how books would one day be exclusively on computers.
Newspaper Club’s Davies and Terrett should feel exonerated in that just as traditional books have avoided the “old-fashioned” label (even as computer published books grow in popularity), so are many major market newspapers which are fiscally well run managing to avoid death-knell labels like “antiquated.”
I liken this analogically to the car lover who owns both a 2011 BMW and a bright red ’57 Chevy or blue Ford from the 1940s.
Like Greg Rasa (above) of The Seattle Times, I too have read copy digitally almost as far back as college – albeit at a smaller daily newspaper – and can attest to how out of context those words and headlines appear when it comes to laying out sections of the paper.
Indeed I would gently argue that this is less about nostalgia and more about practicality 41 years since man stepped foot on the moon.
Yes, I too, miss the morning newspaper. I miss the physical act of going out in pajamas and picking up the paper from the drive way while coffee is brewing in the kitchen. I miss the smell of the newspaper, the layout of the articles, the separate sections of national/international, local, sports, life etc. I miss the turning of the pages by hand and visually checking the size, location, and saliency of a story. Online it’s more difficult to determine all of that (or, my eyes have not been trained yet). But who can argue against “free”?
I do appreciate the convenience of digital news: access to lots of stories from multiple sources and endless commentary. I can read news anywhere and at any time. But the screen does not give justice to the “experience” of newspapers and books that the physical connection does. I have several digital books and it’s super convenient to have them on my iPhone, but I cannot “comprehend” them the same way as if I had the physical book in my hand.
I love books. When I get my hands on a brand new book I like to feel it with my hands, smell the paper and ink, listen to the sound of the pages turning. Have you ever noticed the difference in the sound of, say, turning the pages of a big college study book, a novel, and the Bible?
I think books will continue to stay with us – newspapers, maybe not so much. But perhaps we will splurge now and then and buy a special edition of a fancy newspaper!
I was going to skip this blog, until I read it and remembered my ink-stained hands of yesterday…
My dad was an advertising guy at the Seattle Times, back in the 70′s. He used to bring me to work, introduce me around, show me the presses, help load the delivery trucks…and drive me so I could deliver my route in pouring down rain.
He introduced me to his community and I made it mine. Analog? Yeah, but I was a part of the content ecosystem. Has it died? No: I still pick up the paper at Starbucks while I’m waiting for my mocha, flipping the paper over to scan the news in a quick read…a capability not yet available on any mobile device…
Is the “post digital” world of content undergoing a “retro” period, similar to fashion, where the “old” can become fashionable again? I don’t think it’s retrograde to want a human connection when interacting with content…
I miss newspapers, the nice big spreads of beautiful photographs. Award winning photographs taken by working photojournalists. There is something about picking what you are reading and holding it in your hands, the ink rubbing off on your fingers, and smudging on your face when you itch your nose. I was asked at a Barnes and Noble the other day if I wanted to find out more about their electronic reader, and I told the woman, no I actually like to read books. My friend thought I was rude, I was just being honest. If writing letters is the next big wave of communication, wouldn’t it be nice to see the newspaper come back too….too bad it won’t….
I bet Mr. Cronkite would be surprised to learn the nightly news format that served up drive-by stories in his generation is still alive and well only now that desire for highlights is pulling so many of us in, it’s threatening to upset his trusted news source.
Nevertheless, I’m happy to learn I’m not the only one who still likes to read print versions of news and info. As much as I enjoy the serendipity I experience every time I read news digitally (in fact, in this case, I followed the link to the Cronkite essay and got a bit nostalgic), I still can’t get over the feeling that I actually absorb more of what I’m reading when I sit down with a hard copy. Plus my morning newsprint sneeze attack is part of my daily ritual.
I also trust my printed paper more. But if I explore that a bit, I’m not so sure that’s a rational belief or why that is exactly.
Does holding something I know won’t change – “it’s true because it says so right here” — make me trust the information more? Subconsciously do I still subscribe to Mr. Cronkite’s definition of news – and newspapers — as being an unemotional reporting of the facts even though I don’t think this is really the case with the majority of news?
If I think about it, trusting the source of the information isn’t really why I read my daily newspapers – it’s to get a dose of what’s going on in one convenient sitting and then — if I’m really interested in a particular topic — I corroborate it with other sources. And usually, I find those other sources online.
Regardless of irrational behavior — I can’t imagine giving up my daily newspaper ritual any time soon.
I have to admit; I really enjoy reading from the computer. In the near future I would like to buy a kindle because it is digital and portable. In Latin-American countries, the latest releases of books or newspapers in English are hard to find in the bookstores or kiosks. Sometimes they are not even published in Spanish.
However, there is some nostalgia inside of me because since I was little, my father always told me to read the newspaper every day. I remember how painful it was for me to read the newspaper and I did it at the beginning because I just want to make my Dad proud and then little by little I learned to enjoy it as much as him. When I moved to the US in 2001 I did not speak any English. One of the first things that I did was to join the library and start reading the Seattle Times every day. Now, I have a newspaper subscription and almost every Sunday we both sit in front of each other and talk about the news or even better, the latest technology trends that we both love.
The noise of changing the pages in the newspaper, the ink and the smell makes it an experience. An experience, that I will not let go for anything.
I believe that I’m a perfect “mash-up” for this article.
As an MCDM student who is fully immersed in digital media, I found this blog post refreshing. I think we need to step back and examine whether our desire to take all things digital has helped or hurt the user experience.
I recently made my first e-book purchase. While I appreciated the convenience of being able to download it immediately from the comfort of my home, the reading experience was not what I anticipated. I found it hard to retain info in the e-book format, and my eyes were tired after reading only a handful of pages.
I recalled having once heard that reading comprehension levels are affected by the format of the material, so I did a quick search and found this Huffington Post piece: Print is Better for Information Retention, Study Says [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/30/print-is-better-for-infor_n_518605.html].
Aside from the comprehension argument, there are lots of other reasons why I think I’ll stick with hard copy books for the foreseeable future…When I pick up a book, I want to earmark the pages and write notes in the margins. I want to read at the beach or in the bathtub and not worry that a little sand or an accidental splash will cause total system failure.
I like the fact that my books are stacked on shelves in my living room. Not because I want to appear well read, but because I can glance over and remember the stories, and how they resonated with me at specific points in my life. When friends come over, they often browse through the titles and pick a selection or two to borrow. This spurs discussion and further enriches the experience.
I may eventually be the last Kindle holdout, but I’m okay with that.