(Still from Camden): If you compare a newspaper website to<\/p>\n
a conventional newspaper page, I think the results are a little<\/p>\n
surprising. We’re used to seeing the Internet as a great expansion of<\/p>\n
possibilities, compared to print. But news websites only display about<\/p>\n
15 words on each line, plus advertising and navigation bars. That means<\/p>\n
that a reader must essentially scroll down one vertical column of text<\/p>\n
at a time. A traditional sheet of newsprint, by contrast, is very wide<\/p>\n
and can contain an elaborate array of stories (some linked together),<\/p>\n
diagrams, and photographs. The reader can spread out a newspaper, scan<\/p>\n
it quickly, and select what to read and in what order.<\/p>\n
As a result, news sites are perhaps more like broadcast programs than<\/p>\n
they are like conventional newspapers. A broadcaster can only transmit<\/p>\n
one stream of content at a time. There is always a danger that listeners<\/p>\n
will switch channels if they don’t like what they see and\/or hear. Thus<\/p>\n
broadcasters feel pressure to cater to as large an audience as possible<\/p>\n
with each of their programs. In contrast, a traditional newspaper is<\/p>\n
a diverse bundle of material, which readers can navigate and read selectively.<\/p>\n
The more diversity of content, the better, at least to a point. One<\/p>\n
would think that Internet sources would be more interactive and diverse<\/p>\n
than newspapers, not less so. But I think that the width <\/em>of<\/p>\n our current screens may actually make websites more like broadcast channels.<\/p>\n They have to emphasize a few headline stories and try to keep their<\/p>\n visitors from "clicking" away to other sites.<\/p>\n Of course, there are other differences between newspapers and news<\/p>\n websites. (To name just a few: the lack of any final edition on websites;<\/p>\n visitors’ ability to search current and archived editions; and the prevalence<\/p>\n of links to sites beyond the newspaper’s control.) Still, the difference<\/p>\n in width deserves mention. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" (Still from Camden): If you compare a newspaper website to a conventional newspaper page, I think the results are a little surprising. We’re used to seeing the Internet as a great expansion of possibilities, compared to print. But news websites only display about 15 words on each line, plus advertising and navigation bars. That means […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-internet-and-public-issues"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4273\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}