4 ms·

In your theory, why did literate and engaged people abandon print journalism for Internet but not TV?

Spivak 7y ago
Because this theory gets the timeline right but the value judgements wrong. The people who stuck with print were people who preferred to read the news rather than watch or listen. You can call this “literate” but the trope that reading is some higher form of media needs to go away. People who were previously “engaged” with local newspapers are now the commenters on news sites.
- philwelch 7y ago
  > The people who stuck with print were people who preferred to read the news rather than watch or listen. You can call this “literate” but the trope that reading is some higher form of media needs to go away. Sorry, but it is. Functionally literate people can read and comprehend many more WPM than are typical for human speech. As a consequence, written media are fundamentally capable of much higher information density than visual or audial media, with the exception of certain types of visual or spacial information which can still be printed or included with the written word.
  - Spivak 7y ago
    And that would matter if the goal of writing was maximizing information density. Surely you wouldn't say that gzip is the highest form of the written word.
    - mistermann 7y ago
      This is a good point. Communication, across various mediums, propogates ideas. Information density is interesting, but this style of thinking overlooks persuasive impact.
      - marcus_holmes 7y ago
        I don't watch videos online if I can help it, because they're too slow. If I do, because there's no transcript available, I crank up the speed to x2 or x4 to mitigate the frustration. Any "persuasive" impact from video is lost on me because I'm bored and frustrated after about 30s of watching (and that's after skipping the first 30s of "welcome to my youtube channel, today we'll be doing what the title says we'll be doing, as you know because that's why you clicked on this link" waste of time).
    - philwelch 7y ago
      That’s such a fatuous analogy that I have to conclude that you are deliberately missing the point.
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  > The people who stuck with print were people who preferred to read the news rather than watch or listen. You can call this “literate” but the trope that reading is some higher form of media needs to go away. IIRC, media studies consistently showed a weak positive effect of print news (the more consumed, the more people learned) on knowledge of current events and a stronger negative impact of both radio and TV news (the more of such “news” was consumed, the less people knew about actual events.) The idea that print is, in practice, a higher form of media with regard to news is pretty strongly substantiated. Audio and, especially video are great for conveying emotion, but except for very specific kinds of information aren't a great vehicle for conveying complex information.
  - Chris2048 7y ago
    > The idea that print is, in practice, a higher form of media Is proven by causation, not correlation. There's a difference between "the consumption of media" and "media consumers".
    - dragonwriter 7y ago
      Correlation when controlled for other explanatory factors is as strong as evidence gets for causation; real “proof” of material facts is never incontrovertible the way mathematical/logical proofs can be.
philwelch 7y ago
Because the written word is more sophisticated and information-dense than the spoken word, which means print had to be displaced by another written medium.

Because this theory gets the timeline right but the value judgements wrong. The people who stuck with print were people who preferred to read the news rather than watch or listen. You can call this “literate” but the trope that reading is some higher form of media needs to go away. People who were previously “engaged” with local newspapers are now the commenters on news sites.

philwelch 7y ago
> The people who stuck with print were people who preferred to read the news rather than watch or listen. You can call this “literate” but the trope that reading is some higher form of media needs to go away. Sorry, but it is. Functionally literate people can read and comprehend many more WPM than are typical for human speech. As a consequence, written media are fundamentally capable of much higher information density than visual or audial media, with the exception of certain types of visual or spacial information which can still be printed or included with the written word.
- Spivak 7y ago
  And that would matter if the goal of writing was maximizing information density. Surely you wouldn't say that gzip is the highest form of the written word.
  - mistermann 7y ago
    This is a good point. Communication, across various mediums, propogates ideas. Information density is interesting, but this style of thinking overlooks persuasive impact.
    - marcus_holmes 7y ago
      I don't watch videos online if I can help it, because they're too slow. If I do, because there's no transcript available, I crank up the speed to x2 or x4 to mitigate the frustration. Any "persuasive" impact from video is lost on me because I'm bored and frustrated after about 30s of watching (and that's after skipping the first 30s of "welcome to my youtube channel, today we'll be doing what the title says we'll be doing, as you know because that's why you clicked on this link" waste of time).
  - philwelch 7y ago
    That’s such a fatuous analogy that I have to conclude that you are deliberately missing the point.
dragonwriter 7y ago
> The people who stuck with print were people who preferred to read the news rather than watch or listen. You can call this “literate” but the trope that reading is some higher form of media needs to go away. IIRC, media studies consistently showed a weak positive effect of print news (the more consumed, the more people learned) on knowledge of current events and a stronger negative impact of both radio and TV news (the more of such “news” was consumed, the less people knew about actual events.) The idea that print is, in practice, a higher form of media with regard to news is pretty strongly substantiated. Audio and, especially video are great for conveying emotion, but except for very specific kinds of information aren't a great vehicle for conveying complex information.
- Chris2048 7y ago
  > The idea that print is, in practice, a higher form of media Is proven by causation, not correlation. There's a difference between "the consumption of media" and "media consumers".
  - dragonwriter 7y ago
    Correlation when controlled for other explanatory factors is as strong as evidence gets for causation; real “proof” of material facts is never incontrovertible the way mathematical/logical proofs can be.

philwelch 7y ago

Because the written word is more sophisticated and information-dense than the spoken word, which means print had to be displaced by another written medium.