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I write this post knowing I run the risk of kindling the wrath of my good friend David Heller (@muchosalsa). (BTW I’m *mostly* talking about the physical format of the newspaper in this post) But I have never subscribed to a newspaper in my life. On my way down to Austin last night on the red-eye with David Patton (@spincycle3) I was at a loss with what to do with this stack of newspapers he brought on the plane.
The only value I see in the newspapers is passive discovery. The ability to read something, turn the page and find an interesting article about something you’d never go out of your way to find. The problem is most of the time I have no interest whatsoever in the article on the next page and there’s no StumbleUpon button to take me to the next article that may have more interest to me. I’m just stuck with what’s in the paper. (As a side note I found it much harder to scan a newspaper than a Web page)
AVC, Fred Wilson one of the original early stage investors in Twitter recently gave a speech at the 140 conference: The Value Of Twitter Is In “The Power Of Passed Linksâ€.
To me Twitter is my passive discovery. The thousands of people I follow provide that discovery that most people get from the paper. Except instead of reading one paper I read bits of hundreds of “papers” and blogs.
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So I'm the guy who handed Tac the dead tree editions of the news. I must admit that I offered them as much to see what he would do with them as it was a sharing exercise. Tac was a good sport.
While I've been a digital journalist for most of my career, I still enjoy reading the dead tree edition from time to time. To this point, my access to digital information while on public transportation (where I spend a fair amount of time before moving West) was spotty, and the low-tech print edition served fine.
I've been fascinated in recent years with the efforts by mainstream news sites to recreate the “serendipity” of leafing through a print edition or passively watching a TV show in the interactive experience of the Web. Mostly that's been confined to most-read lists.
But I think Twitter and similar services do a better job now because you can find out what like-minded the people you consider friends or influentials are reading.
Posted by David Patton | 16. Jun, 2009, 5:11 pmI read the title of this post and before even seeing it thought I might get a mention! One last argument I'll make defending the need for newspapers. Have you ever tried to use a G1 or an Iphone to start a fire? They don't make an app for that!
Posted by David | 16. Jun, 2009, 11:38 pm