Newspapers -v- Online

[Richard Waller]

Get your daily news on line. The hardcopy versions are getting so large and so expensive, and take so long to read thoroughly that I am thinking of cancelling the morning call by the boy-on-the-bike. In fact if it wasn't for the crossword which my wife spends about half-an-hour on, which is only available on-line by subscription I would have stopped by now.

The Daily Telegraph on Saturday comes in about 12 sections - about 150 pages - weighs 2lbs (900 grams) - costs 1.40 UKP (say $3) - takes about four hours to read. And then goes in the recycle bin. Life is too short.

Plus the online version is updated at 4pm with the latest trivia. The tabloids are smaller, cheaper and have very little news, though lots of celebrity scandal. The Mirror and the Star can be read cover-to-cover in about 6 minutes, but why bother.

But the difference in format between printed and on-line is interesting. Online the headline is key; if the topic is not clearly stated in the headline it will not get accessed at all. Titles and first four words in this forum could sometimes learn from this.

And visitors will skip over any page where it is solid text; more headings than the printed version are necessary.