Monday 28 July 2008

Traditional Information Hierarchies

What I do at www.aplaceintheauvergne.blogspot.com is to ignore traditional information hierarchies within the IHT, and try and find a daily narrative, tailored to my own interests. Which is what younger people, teenagers indeed, do every day online. And I don't expect to pay for the privilige.

And I am 42.

Young people "aren't as troubled as some of us older folks are by reading that doesn't go in a line," said Rand Spiro, a professor of educational psychology at Michigan State University who is studying reading practices on the Internet. "That's a good thing, because the world doesn't go in a line, and the world isn't organized into separate compartments or chapters."
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/07/27/america/read.php

Some other stuff that is also relevant to what I call 'information ebru' which I practise at www.aplaceintheauverng.blogspot.com

Some traditionalists warn that digital reading is the intellectual equivalent of empty calories. Often, they argue, writers on the Internet employ a cryptic argot that vexes teachers and parents.
Zigzagging through a cornucopia of words, pictures, video and sounds, they say, distracts more than strengthens readers. And many youths spend most of their time on the Internet playing games or sending messages, activities that involve minimal reading at best.
Web proponents believe that strong readers on the Web may eventually surpass those who rely on books. Reading five Web sites, an op-ed article and a blog post or two, experts say, can be more enriching than reading one book.
"It takes a long time to read a 400-page book," said Spiro. "In a tenth of the time," he said, the Internet allows a reader to "cover a lot more of the topic from different points of view."

Some traditionalists warn that digital reading is the intellectual equivalent of empty calories. Often, they argue, writers on the Internet employ a cryptic argot that vexes teachers and parents.
Zigzagging through a cornucopia of words, pictures, video and sounds, they say, distracts more than strengthens readers. And many youths spend most of their time on the Internet playing games or sending messages, activities that involve minimal reading at best.
Web proponents believe that strong readers on the Web may eventually surpass those who rely on books. Reading five Web sites, an op-ed article and a blog post or two, experts say, can be more enriching than reading one book.
"It takes a long time to read a 400-page book," said Spiro. "In a tenth of the time," he said, the Internet allows a reader to "cover a lot more of the topic from different points of view."
Web readers are persistently weak at judging whether information is trustworthy. In one study, Donald Leu, who researches literacy and technology at the University of Connecticut, asked 48 students to look at a spoof Web site, at http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/, about a mythical species known as the "Pacific Northwest tree octopus." Nearly 90 percent of them missed the joke and deemed the site a reliable source.

So if you have brand trust, but mix up the mix outside traditional newspaper information hierarchies who says that the NYT can't be a major destination for young people, and who says they won't read a newspaper? (Especially if you throw in some brand status - see earlier recent posts on this.)

And while we're on the subject of traditional information hierarchies, why is it that the NYT and the IHT present ONE internet face to readers of ALL ages. Does that really make sense?

Isn't it time for Newspaper 2.0?






http://www.aplaceintheauvergne.blogspot.com/

International Herald Tribune
IHT
New York Times
NYT

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