There’s something slightly askew about publishing a story in the newspaper about the use of Twitter. Like hitchhiking to the Hummer dealer…
Digital communication is so different than that found in print. The velocity is amazing. The creation of new types of nuance are boggling, the character winks, abbreviations and such that are the shorthands we’ve come to rely upon. I’ve dabbled with Twitter, and I find it interesting but not terribly satisfying. It’s like flipping channels, where you get 30 second and only 30 second on each station before it moves to the next. Sometimes, there’s a funny joke. Often it’s only part of one, or something that doesn’t do it.
But it’s another way of getting information, and it poses challenges for traditional and conventional media. With all the angst and hand-wringing about the fate of the printed-on-paper world, I read a great speech last week by the publisher of the Louisville Courier-Journal. You can read the full version here.
Here’s the fun part:
Finally, I’d like to conclude today with a scenario dreamed up by my friend, Ken Paulson, who recently retired as editor of USA Today.
The scenario centers on an alternative history in which I will ask you to imagine that Johannes Gutenberg invented not movable type but a digital modem, and that for more than five centuries, all of our information has come to us online. Now, suddenly, today, someone has invented . . . a newspaper, and here’s the text of the press conference announcing the arrival of this new-fangled product:
We’re pleased to announce a new product that will revolutionize the way you access information. It will save you time and money and keep you better informed than ever before.
Just consider the hours you’ve spent on the Internet looking for information of interest to you. We’ve hired specialists who live and work in your hometown to cull information sources and provide a daily report tailored to your community, your friends and your neighbors.
We also know that you sometimes wonder whether you can trust the information you see online. We plan to introduce a painstaking new process called fact-checking in which we actually verify the information before we pass it along to you.
In addition to saving time online, you’ll also save money. You won’t need so many expensive ink cartridges or reams of your own paper because information will be printed out for you in full color and physically delivered to your home at the same time each day —— all for less than what you would tip the driver from Pizza Hut or Papa Johns.
You worry about your kids stumbling across pornography on the Internet, but this product is pre-screened and guaranteed suitable for the whole family.
And in a security breakthrough, we guarantee this product to be absolutely virus-free. We also promise the elimination of those annoying pop-up ads.
It will be the most portable product in the world, and it doesn’t require batteries or electricity. And when the flight attendant tells you to turn off your electronic devices, you can turn this product on, opening page after page without worrying about interfering with the plane’s radar.
To top it all off, you don’t need a long-term warranty or service protection program. If you’re not happy with this product on any day, we’ll redesign it and bring you a new one the next day.
Makes you think.