Kinsley's rhetorical overreach

New in the Phoenix: Why the way we talk about Obama's race matters

DQM chats with Ken Auletta

8 Comments

• ani dalit said:

  One of my problems with on-line versions of things (library catalogues, newspapers, etc.) is that I am never quite sure whether I have missed something (important).  With a physical newspaper or index cards in files I can get a sense easily of how the body is structured and then learn how to navigate it and to search it thoroughly.  I can methodically go through it, perhaps using a particular strategy.  On-line I feel that I am at the mercy of searching tools whose algorithms I don't really understand, and, since I can't "see" the whole thing (site maps aren't much help because they're vague) for an overview, I am never quite sure I've found everything the site offers that I'm looking for.  This may speak to my own ineptitude with electronic technology, but, to get back to the issue at hand, I like that I can flip the pages in the newspaper sections that interest me and make sure that I haven't missed something I want to read.

  February 10, 2009 8:34 PM

• Dan Kennedy said:

  Adam ... it's pretty hard to argue math. As the noted newspaper consultant Bill Belichick once said, it is what it is.

  February 10, 2009 10:06 PM

• Adam said:

  Dan, you're focused (like Kinsley) on what the paper does with the money it gets from the consumer. I'm focused on why the consumer spends the money in the first place--which strikes me as important when you're debating whether people will pay to get news.

  February 11, 2009 7:21 AM

• ani dalit said:

  As the vendor, you want my money.  How you match it to your costs may not affect my willingness to pay for what you are selling.  You think you're selling me the cup, because it costs you more than the lemonade, but I'm thirsty and I think I'm buying the liquid.  If you figure out a way to provide me liquid in a different kind of container, maybe I'll buy it.  But if it's like one of those paper cones for ice cream, maybe I won't, maybe I'll go where I can get a real sugar cone or a dish out of which to eat my ice cream, instead.

  Or maybe the issue can be thought of as a cubist painting -- multiple perspectives simultaneously.

  February 11, 2009 7:36 AM

• ani dalit said:

  And as I understand it, part of the problem with selling the news is that the lemonade (news content), with or without the cup, is actually too expensive for buyers, thus giving rise to the need for advertisers or some other third-party subvention.

  February 11, 2009 8:16 AM

• RM said:

  you're spot-on. also, because kinsley is kinsley, and think that's sufficient, and has fooled many others into thinking the same, he's exempted from supporting his arguments. seems like it's enough that he founded slate; also it's apparently the case that because slate failed at this, everyone will. but first slate is an opinion site, not a news site. second slate is not very good. but another bit of sophism is the cry that newspapers can't survive on $2 a month from a million -- no kidding. but that million is on top of the millions the best papers already have. finally i favor the subscription model because it might be all that will work, and will make the surviving papers better. the newspaper business can't redirect its old revenue stream; it needs to create a new one.

  February 11, 2009 1:51 PM

• Mr Punch said:

  I agree with ani dalit -- I read a newspaper differently depending on whether it's on paper or on screen, and I read more of it on paper. (A different reader technology might close the gap some, I suppose.)

  One thing I read more of in hard copy is advertising. This, it seems to me, is a significant part of the issue of how to pay for newspaper-like services going forward: Is there a way to capture the advertising revenues while ceding the subscription/newsstand revenues, or not?

  February 11, 2009 2:00 PM

• danny bloom said:

  "Reading" online will never be the same! -- "Screening" enters the

  online vocabulary.

  Do you "screen" news online, or do you "read" news in print

  newspapers? -- A new word has been coined to refer to reading

  information online, changing the way we take in information

  What you are doing now is not reading, but

  "screening." Yes, you are at this very moment screening the text

  printed digitally on this computer screen. You are not reading text on

  a paper surface; you are "screening" this article through the lens of

  the computer screen in front of you. A new word is born -- screening!

  When a top computer industry writer at the New York Times was told

  about this new term, he told me in a  one-word email note:

  "Hmmmmmmm."

  Screening? Can anyone just coin a new word and make it stick? No, but

  new words are coined every day, and some stick and some don't. Time

  will tell whether or not "screening" (to mean "reading information on

  a computer screen, as distinct from reading a print newspaper or

  magazine or book") will stay with us or not. For now, the word has

  been accepted by the editors at urbandictionary.com and is listed

  here:

  www.urbandictionary.com/define.php

  Screening is defined as: "To read text on a computer screen, cellphone

  screen, Kindle screen or PDA screen or BlackBerry screen; replaces the

  term "reading" which now only refers to reading print text on paper."

  Example: "I hate reading print newspapers now. I do all my screening online."

  The word is so new, not everyone has seen it yet. And many do not

  agree with its coinage.

  Amit Gilboa, an Israeli writer living in Singapore, told me:

  "No, it's still reading. Whether in a book, a print newspaper,

  chalkboard, whiteboard, it's still reading words made up of letters.

  Screening is still reading."

  However, Hidetoshi Abe in Tokyo, Japan, told this reporter he likes

  the new term and agrees it fits our new Internet age. "I think

  'screening' makes perfect sense to represent the way we now take in

  information via computer screens. It's a whole new ballgame."

  Reading, of course, is a complex cognitive process of decoding symbols

  printed on

  a paper surface for the purpose of deriving meaning (reading

  comprehension) and/or constructing meaning, according to scholars.

  Written information on a

  printed page is received by the retina, processed by the primary

  visual cortex, and interpreted in Wernicke's area.

  But when we "read" online (or "screen", in the new coinage), the

  digitalized information is processed in a different way. Reading

  online is [b]not[/b] the same thing as reading on a paper surface in a book or

  magazine or newspaper.

  Reading on a print paper surface is a means of language acquisition,

  of communication, and of sharing information and ideas. Screening on

  the Internet is a horse

  of a different color.

  Readers of print paper texts use a variety of reading strategies to

  assist with decoding (to translate symbols into sounds or visual

  representations of language), and comprehension. Screening online uses

  other strategies, and the information is processed by our brains in a

  different way as well.

  Reading text on print paper is now an important way for the general

  population in many societies to access information and make meaning.

  However, a new form of reading, called "screening" now takes place when a

  person "reads" text on a computer screen or PDA screen or cellphone

  screen. This form of reading, now called "screening", is a very

  different form of  communcation.

  You have just "screened" your very first article online using this new

  term. You are now an Internet screener. Congratulations, and welcome

  to this amazing new world.

  Comments are more than welcome, pro and con.

  February 16, 2009 9:35 AM

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