Linear and Circular Reading

Quote of the day:
“Every spark of friendship and love will die without a home.”
--Arcade Fire, from the song “Intervention.”

Yesterday’s post about the changing role of newspapers got me to thinking about the impact of seeking news online.

It’s been fashionable for a very long time to decry the decline of newspaper readership. The often-expressed concern is that this contributes to lower reading levels.

The more-often-expressed concern is that it exacerbates an already-low understanding of what is going on in our communities and the world.

But many folks are keeping up with the news, they’re just doing it in a different way. I’m not sure that overall news readership (or “consumption,” if you will) is lower than it was 20 years ago.

Having the internet available is a huge gift when I want news about something specific. A search will bring up several reliable sources. (How we know they’re reliable or not is another story--that’s why I depend on newspapers with excellent reputations to maintain.)

When I go to a newspaper site to browse, I scan the first page and click on something that interests me. From there I click on something else that interests me, and again and again. After four or five stops, I usually leave the site and go somewhere else.

I call it “directed” or “linear” reading. I find a subject or an idea that interests me and then move from that into something related and so forth. The journey is more or less in straight lines, to destinations.

Newspaper browsing is very different. I look over the headlines on each page, sometimes stopping to read more. When I get to the end of the paper--or my time is up, I stop.

It might be called “exploratory” or “circular” reading. This journey is more of a wandering, with the direction constantly shifting.

There is a certain serendipity to newspaper reading. I am constantly discovering things I didn’t know I’d be interested in. This is a good thing.

This does happen online. But it isn’t how the online experience is defined. The internet is used for searching and finding things, and then pursuing related things.

My suggestion to not lose the sense of serendipity is to sometimes deliberately wander when we’re online.

And then sing “Serendipity Do-Dah.”