With great aplomb and with references to Gutenberg, Sebastian Brandt and The First Law of Technology, John Naughton’s Observer column today concludes that the web is changing the way young people read.
He quotes an exciting report from the University of London that says our young are becoming:
‘promiscuous, diverse and volatile.’ ‘Horizontal’ information-seeking means ‘a form of skimming activity, where people view just one or two pages from an academic site then “bounce” out, perhaps never to return.
Sagely, he continues with a prediction:
the universe of linear exposition, quiet contemplation, disciplined reading and study - is imploding, and we don’t know if what will replace it will be better or worse.
Okay, so I am teasing. Not John Naughton personally, whose column I like and who sounds like a fascinating, clever and attractive person if you go to his website, but the donnish caste of mind that occasionally leads to saying some very obvious things … well, a little portentously.
Of course people (not just young people) don’t read on the web like they do in print. Having an academic report that says web reading is superficial sounds every bit as startling as a report that says sleeping is horizontal.
People have always skimmed some things and carefully read others. We used to riffle through reference books, press clippings, cookery books or cupboards full of old maps. Now we just go to Google. But for Ulysses (John’s favourite novel) we need a book.
Nor do I see the implosion of reading and quiet contemplation among the young. The young that I know read voraciously. Fiction sales are up and up. More papers and magazines are printed every week than ever before in the history of the universe. Somebody must be reading all this dead wood.
I think, down here in the real world, the age of Gutenberg is alive and very well.
January 27th, 2008
I wanted to know how our Sunday paper - The Observer - struck an intelligent 16-year-old. So today I found the required teenager and confined her to the kitchen table with a pen and paper. She drew a line down the middle of the paper. One side was headed “like” and the other “don’t like”.
It wouldn’t be worth mentioning here, had the result not been dominated by design.
I am always preaching the astonishing increase in the power of visual communication since I have been in newspapers. It has gone from not mattering very much, to mattering more than anything — in under 20 years. One very senior publisher said to me a few months back: “All the papers have pretty much the same stuff in them these days. The only thing that distinguishes them is the design”.
Right at the top of the list of our teenager’s likes was the design of The Observer. She liked the strong section titles and the clarity of the organisation of the paper. She liked the sans font for the display text. She liked the expansive, confident photography on the section fronts.
“The whole look is clear and modern without seeming frivolous or gaudy”. Particular praise was heaped upon the strong use of colour: the colour rules across the tops of the pages and colour type for the quotes. As for navigation, she liked the large page numbers which make it easier to find the desired place.
As for the reading matter, she was most impressed by the Observer Magazine. “The articles are all good - original and not too dark and serious. I like Art Attack and Show & Tell and First Person. Above all I liked Fashion and My Favourite Outfit because they are not telling you what to wear, which is usually boring and annoying, but showing different and individual styles.”
Among other articles that caught the teenage eye was the piece about cellphone novelists in the New York Times section.
Just about the only thing our focus grouper did not like was another design point. “Why are some of the section titles designed differently from others? Sport has dotted rules, Review has lines and Business/Media is completely different. This is pointless and most annoying!”
Note to self: we at Shakeup Media must get more imaginative at using colour.
January 27th, 2008
