Farhad Manjoo, a tech writer for Slate (he was poached from Wired last year, if you want some cred) loves the Amazon Kindle. In fact, as a tech writer, he loves all things tech-y. He’s an unabashed cheerleader for a lot of things that are shiny and new, and while I don’t always agree with him on everything, he gets his hands on a lot of gear that I don’t, and I trust him to be thorough in his reviews, and diligent in his reporting about them.
As I said, he loves the Kindle. But he now says that he doesn’t think it’ll replace newspapers. At least, not yet. The reason he gives is graphic design:
Every newspaper you’ve ever read was put together by someone with an opinion about which of the day’s stories was most important. Newspapers convey these opinions through universal, easy-to-understand design conventions—they put important stories on front pages, with the most important ones going higher on the page and getting more space and bigger headlines. You can pick up any page of the paper and—just by reading headlines, subheads, and photo captions—quickly get the gist of several news items. Even when you do choose to read a story, you don’t have to read the whole thing. Since it takes no time to switch from one story to another, you can read just a few paragraphs and then go on to something else.
The Kindle, he notes, reverses that in some ways. Because each headline is exactly the same size and weight, there are no clues as to which is most important (many news websites are like this, though some generally put more important stories at the top, or they have at best three difference sizes of headlines). There is also a small delay when loading a story on the Kindle. It’s just long enough, he says, to not want to do it too often. So, you “stick with it until the end. You trade breadth for depth: In 30 minutes of reading the Kindle, you get further into a lot fewer stories.”
Grant Hamilton
2 Responses to “Newspaper life watch: Graphic design is the “killer app” for print”
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I sometimes read the news on my smrtphone, but it hasn’t really caught on for me – for some of the reasons mentioned above, but also because I like the tactile sensation of newsprint. It kinda tickles your fingers a little and crackles satisfyingly when you turn the pages. And the pages are huge, so you are guaranteed to find something that catches your eye. Sure, it’s annoying when newspaper abusers crush up their paper and leave them on the bus floor so that it can become a hazard for others, but there will always be jerks who ruin nice things for good people.
If and when the makers of Amazon Kindle and other similar technologies finally understand that newspaper design is part of the allure and pleasure of reading the news, then I think there will be a much better chance for news “print” to flourish. Advertising could remain a major part of the overall design even in an electronic medium. Say goodbye to the dead tree news and hello to functional, readable, paperless art.
In spite of my love for holding a paper in my hands, I would love to see that day come, especially in a format that is easily portable. Magazines (at the very least) could benefit from this kind of technology.