Here is my take on this. I believe every word and don't for a second doubt the science. It makes sense to me, and I believe it is accurate to a point. That point and the part that I don't/didn't understand is the haptic feeling regarding holding a digital substrate. Yes, there is no smell to a smartphone and pages don't crinkle when scrolling. Perhaps it is my limited understating of the science of the haptic process, but I am holding, touching and feeling the weight and presence of a physical product in my hands when I read on my smart phone or tablet. And let's not forget that soon the digital substrates will be both more flexible and more importantly reflective, rather than light transmitting and in a sense more like paper. Does any of that matter to haptic science?
Regardless of my questions it was a great presentation on the power of "feeling" the printed product.
- - - - - - - - - -
Following Daniel Dejan was David Remnick, who has been the editor of
The New Yorker
since 1998 and a staff writer for the magazine since 1992. He took the stage bemused I think by the previous speaker's analysis and stated in no uncertain terms that his experience contrary to the science has found long-form reading alive and well in digital formats.
He said that we have to admit reality, take an honest assessment - not just good news and not just bad news - just where we are. He told us that he got to the newsroom when the typewriters were leaving. By 1969 The New Yorker had a well-educated, highly interested class of readers and had 6,000 annual ad pages. In those days the biggest problem was producing enough quality edit to compliment the ad pages.
"Then as time went on we were losing money, display advertising was going down and the biggest consumer boom in history was ending." And then the world changed - printed ad pages diminished and the internet came into being. The magazine world was slower to react to this major change than the newspaper world. Although newspapers didn't make all the right choices they made changes quicker than the magazine industry.
Since then we restored The New Yorker in many ways. Today we admit that print is a magnificent technology, which we sell much less of.
The questions are: who are we, what are we about as publishers? Our old institutions that seemed permanent aren't. Life magazine or the cover of Time magazine was the ultimate achievement in the old days.
At The New Yorker we risked the worst to prevent the worst. The idea that information needs to be free forgets that information needs to be paid for.
The belief that no one will read anything of any length on the internet is wrong. Our model is to get $100 is based on greatness - on the web, on the radio and in print. We don't give it away to our readers. They actually want it and are willing to pay for it. They care about the words and the beauty of the thing. We are succeeding in long form everywhere we place it.
In the end both Daniel and David presented fascinating points of view - one from a more scientific point of reference and the other from the actual experience of a successful long-form publisher.
This must be the end to Part One of my review of the PRIMEX conference, or I will be testing the limits of long-form e-Newsletter reading. That might be a good exercise, but I'll leave it for another day.
Part two of this review in a few days after I recover from my three trip to Berlin, Germany and the FIPP Digital Innovators Summit.
