By I.J. Hudson
I’ve written before about the differences between reading a news story online and reading it in the “paper.” I won’t bore you with a repeat, but I did notice something interesting yesterday that adds another element in the pixel v. paper arguments.
Often, people send me links to stories, or the stories are included in a “clips” format. You just follow the link, or in the case of clips, just read them.
Earlier this week, I reached a particular story through one of the supplied links. When you do that, all you see on the display is the story. Pretty simple. In this case, I knew the background on the piece and when reading it by following the link, the story struck me as “reasonable.”
It wasn’t until I saw the print version that it really hit me. This had been the lead story – the front page story in a local publication. Following the link had eliminated the “placement” or importance the publication put on the story.
What’s the point? If you generally go to the homepages of news websites, you can get a sense of placement - what their editors think is important, and what people are going to see/read first. But if you merely follow links, provided either by a friend or something like “Google Alerts” you can miss something. Not the words, but a part of the visual context others are seeing.
Just a thought.
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