Newspapers... why?

When asked to post about online versus print news, I was actually pretty interested to complete the assignment. I've always looked down on newspapers. They're large, bulky, and cumbersome... not to mention the fact that your hands are covered with ink when you're finished with 'em. How old fashioned can you get? And another thing: why does it seem like whenever I pick up a newspaper and start reading headlines, I'm not learning anything NEW!? It seems to me that everything I'm reading happened yesterday.

So needless to say, I entered into this assignment with a somewhat biased viewpoint.

As you've probably guessed by now, I don't have a newspaper subscription, so I decided to bring some change with me to school and pick up the day's edition of the San Jose Mercury News. I cruised over to the nearest newspaper stand, pumped in my twenty-five cent-ers, grabbed a copy and was on my way. Seemed harmless enough... I was actually quite satisfied with the experience. Until I took a few steps to a close-by park bench and actually started to dive into the thing. All hell broke loose as I opened up the paper and advertisements, entertainment guides, and a million other little leaflets began dumping all over the ground and blowing away with the wind. And you thought pop up ads were annoying... As I scrambled to gather up all my little runaways, I eyed a trash can a few steps away. I turned immediately and tossed my new papery friends into the giant circular file. Okay, back to today's news. One thing I actually did like about the paper was the layout of the front page. It was very easy to see what was most important today (according to the editors), and you could tell what was in the rest of the paper, at a glance, by scanning down the sidebar on the left hand side. However, finding the story within the paper was a completely different task. Folding, unfolding, flipping over, setting aside, and getting pretty close to giving up were just a few things that came along with 'reading the news.' After about twenty minutes of this, I really did feel like I read a few good stories. But there was plenty of information I came across that I already knew: sports scores, weather forecasts, stock reports, and even some of the front page stories.

Well, I decided I was done with that for a while; so I stuffed my newspaper, with my ink-laden hands, inside my backpack and was on my way. Mission: accomplished.

A few hours later, after I had finished my day at school, it was time to go the online way. I pulled my nice compact little iBook out and logged on. Within seconds, I was on the Mercury's website. In order to view some complete stories they asked me to log-in, and after I did so I was on my way. It was clean, concise, up to date, and ink free! Could it get any better? Within no time at all I noticed the first difference. Remember those main headlines I read just that morning in the newspaper? Well now, only a few hours later on the website, they were bumped down to give room to NEWER, more important happenings. Meanwhile, that same newspaper was being purchased all over town as 'news!' I felt sorry for the people who might have just then, at that moment, been pumping in their quarters to a newspaper stand for outdated information.

The website was much easier to navigate than the giant newspaper. With only a click here or a click there, I was reading stories that I wanted in seconds. I didn't have to sort through a bunch of articles side by side. I didn't have to pull open and unfold a bunch of pages. I clicked, I read, and I was informed. No fuss. No muss. Just 100% news absorption.

Although the two experiences were drastically different, there were a couple similarities to note as well. First of all, the front page of the website was actually laid out quite similar to the newspaper. Main stories and large headlines were in the middle with a large typeface, and the sidebar on the left with different sections was there too. Instead of having to turn pages though, you just had to click anything in that sidebar and your were taken to your page, instantly. The online version contained ads as well. However, they didn't jump out of the website and scatter all over the ground sending you in a mad anti-littering dash. They stayed neat and tidy somewhere on each page. They left you alone as long as you didn't bother them. And that's the way we liked it.

Overall, there were two main differences I noticed between the two forms of media. First was user friendliness. There was just no comparison with how easy and painless the website was to navigate, read, and view. The second was timeliness. Sure some of the stuff in the newspaper was 'new to me,' but who are we kidding... none of the information was actually 'new.'