Having been a consumer of on-line news for many years with almost no print publication in my media diet, I am no longer able to compare the relative merits of the two. Apparently, online newspapers haven't got the formula right.
Kirk McElhearn reminds of something I did instinctively with a real newspaper and have never done online - "skimming" and yes, it is a distinct loss in terms of user experience.
When you read a newspaper, you use special strategies called "skimming" and "scanning" to navigate the pages. Skimming means you glance over pages until you find things you want to look at more closely, reacting to certain words or photos, and scanning is taking a closer look, reading for gist, or reading introductions and conclusions that give you more information and often help you decide whether you want to read an entire article. With online newspapers, however, you don't have this option.
It's amazing how users can get conditioned to a less than optimal experience over time.
An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t...
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