[LINK] Printed newspapers vs. online news: "The News"

[Robin Whittle]

In the thread: "Open publishing strike - editorial board resigns"
Stephen wrote, in part:

> And after reading The Age newspaper, usually from cover to cover, I
> feel satisfied. It's as if one is abreast of the news. I feel
> up-to-date, and on-top of what the local news-experts think is the
> state of our universe.

I think a major function of mass market newspapers which are widely read
in a particular country, state, or city, is that by looking through them
and reading at least some of it, it is possible to get a reasonably good
idea of what many other people in the region might be thinking - or at
least have seen some of the information which is the basis for their
understanding of the world.  Likewise TV, if we could spare the time and
tolerate the inability to randomly access it, the intrusions and the
generally low level of intellectual expectations.

The front pages of major news sites such as of the ABC, BBC, CNN, Wall
St Journal etc. probably serve this function to some extent.

However, they are tree-structured arrangements, not something which can
be easily scanned from one end to the other, ignoring the sports or
other sections which are not of interest.

Some newspaper sites show "today's newspaper".  The Age's website does
not.  I am not sure how it works with tablet and cellphone apps.

A printed newspaper is a document, containing advertising, which can be
annoying but does not involve flashing changes, video, sound or things
popping up in the way of reading.

The document is the same as everyone else gets - though I recall some
years ago that The Age had a special country edition, which pissed off
some country folk because they felt that city people should be more
aware of whatever was thought to be important outside the cities.

The document is worth a lot of money per page, so the size of each
article reflects the judgment the editors made about its importance.
This would be primarily its perceived interest to the readers, but would
also be influenced by any other benefits the newspaper gains from
promoting a particular event or viewpoint.

Because the page space is valuable, and because everyone gets the same
document on a given day, we get to see a reasonably tightly edited
document which hundreds of thousands of other people in our physical
area (as defined by the ability to print and distribute the paper in a
mass-market fashion, including with home delivery).

Websites, apps and the like involve no hard space limits, cost per
character or square cm of photograph space.  Their audience could be all
over the world.  They are more open-ended and contain a potentially
larger amount of stuff - which means that fewer people in the catchment
area of a "newspaper" will actually glance at or read the material on a
website which is available on a given day.

With a single browsing action in a broadsheet, we turn the page, cast
our eyes around for a few seconds, and can ascertain:

  1 - Each article and advert, unless we choose not to look at the
      smallest item, including individual letters to the editor.

  2 - How much space is assigned to each one - therefore how "important"
      it is (judged to be and so made important because more people
      read it or at least see it as "important" even if they don't
      read it).

  3 - The headline and captions on photos if we want to read them.

  4 - The page number and the department of the newspaper, which
      conveys a lot about how important the story is thought to be
      by the editors and how much attention it will get amongst
      other readers.

Then we can read articles, dip into them etc. all with moving only our
eyes.  There's no scrolling with mouse, trackball or fingertips.

The newspaper of a given day can easily be read on a later day, or any
time that day.  This is not the case at all for The Age and I am not
sure how easy it is with other "today's newspaper" sites to catch up on
the entire newspaper from a few days ago.

The Melbourne Herald (when it was an afternoon newspaper) used to have
different editions, with considerable changes in the front page at
least.  There was also a "Stop Press" section on the front page printed
in red with a paragraph of the very latest update on some event.  I
guess people born after the 1970s wouldn't know what "Stop Press" means.

A newspaper, especially the halfway-gone broadsheet format (The Age is
tabloid = "compact" Monday to Friday at present), can convey a vast
amount of information accessible to the eyeballs all at once.  No
computer screen can do that, though there are some very large LCD
screens now and in principle they could probably convey nearly as much
information IF the website was configured to use the space wisely -
which will not be the case since most people do not have such big screens.

Stephen wrote "the news".  This means whatever the editors of this
newspaper choose to be "the news" on that day, subject to space, various
other priorities and whether or not they could actually get a story
together by the deadline.

This would be of moderate importance on its own.  However, I think these
choices are more important because they control what a few hundred
thousand people accept and scan through, as that day's document.

Websites which are constantly updated are nothing like this.  They do
reflect choices, but they are not linear, scannable, static, documents.

A mass-circulation newspaper, like a widely viewed nightly TV news
program, or a widely listened to radio news program such as the ABC's
"PM", defines "the news" more clearly than most news websites.

In general, the greater tree-structured depth, lack of linearity and
stability, and the possibility of updates during the day make a news
website much less of a single vehicle for "the news" than mass market
newspapers, TV or radio programs.

When everyone had just newspapers, magazines and a few local TV and
radio stations, it was pretty easy to get an understanding of what most
people in a city, state or perhaps country were using as their source of
news and general understanding of the outside world.  This is a lot more
difficult with widespread use of Internet communications.

 - Robin