I Read. Do You Read?

A few days ago, a colleague said to matter-of-factly to me: “people generally won’t read magazine articles online”.  I kind’ve paused and simmered on the idea.  It didn’t match my own personal experience.

That pointed statement has remained on my mind.  I thought of it again recently when reading a Q&A with web designer Jeffrey Zeldman.  When asked which “initiatives that are on the horizon do you think will benefit the Web’s future the most?” He replied:

I don’t think any technology out there holds to the key to a better web experience for all. As far as I can tell, the web’s future will be driven by the same thing that drove its past: good ideas, good writing, good design.

So, what kind of good writing are we talking about?  And what about this “rule” that says people won’t read lengthy articles online?  Even GREAT well written articles?

I’m aware that some web (and print) audiences consume information (graze) at a different tempo. The attention spans of goldfish crowd. And we’re all guilty of reading/skimming in that mode on occasion.  And I’m aware that long sections of copy should be broken up somewhat and presented differently on-screen.  These realities should effect how we develop and present content on the web.

But back to my core conflict.

To conclude that online readers as a group don’t read the longer articles that they would in print -  to insinuate that web audiences belong somehow to a lower class of readership, …I don’t buy it.  I find it insulting.

Anyway, I’ve done a little searching in attempts to find similar conversations on this topic.

At Gangrey.com there is a short post on this very subject, followed by a lengthy and entertaining comment trail from newspaper-types and journalists:

…We’re having discussions about what are the best ways to do storytelling online. Some have argued that there’s no place for “narrative” storytelling online, that people won’t take the time to sit down and read true “stories” online, that storytelling must take a different (and presumably less time-intensive) form.

The comments/replies to this post are great.  A sampling:

All the research I’ve seen shows that people are more likely to read long stories online than in a newspaper. Let me put it another way. When do you have more time? In the morning drinking coffee or all day stuck in front of a computer screen?

people think in stories, this happened, then that happened, then the next thing happened, beginning to middle to end. We want a political candidate to come in story form. Juries go with the most believable, most compelling story. In sports, every game is a story, every season is a story, every franchise is a story. It’s been this way FOREVER, and I just can’t believe — will not believe — that’s changed in the last, oh, 10, 12 years since the Web came along.

I regularly have lots of ideas on how to tell stories using the Web, and I usually can get the Web folks stuff that’s half there (such as handing them an edited video, a markup of a Web page, etc.). But unless I know how to actually program it on the page, a lot of times it just doesn’t happen. That’s been the case at every paper and magazine I’ve worked at. I’ve started studying how to use Flash, but, honestly, the right-brained computer programming and left-brained writing is a lot of brain to be using. And because I prefer writing, sometimes I just throw my hands up, post an audio slide show and move on to the next story.

you see so many other papers where the top story on the web site is “what’s the most salacious bit of cop news from this morning” or “what photo gallery is going to get the most hits” — obviously, the lowest common denominator in web “journalism.”

What I’m hoping to do is try to get a narrative foothold in our paper’s digital world. And when you go up to a web editor to discuss this, and the first thing he says is, “Well, we first need to realize that people don’t read long stories online,” you can see the culture we’re battling here.