• Home
  • About
    • diacritical
    • Douglas McLennan
    • Contact
  • Other AJBlogs
  • ArtsJournal

diacritical

Douglas McLennan's blog

The Text Revolution – Why Text Is More Efficient Than TV

June 21, 2009 by Douglas McLennan Leave a Comment

twitterIran-2.jpgIn the TV Age the tube has dominated breaking news. Watching crucial moments of a big dramatic story on TV can be compelling, and the TV news audience has dwarfed newspaper readership. It is accepted wisdom that TV owns the dramatic breaking story; newspapers bat cleanup.

But maybe not. Watch a big story on cable news and you’re in for acres of boring vamping and conjecture wrapped around the couple of minutes here and there that you really do want to see. And those dramatic couple of minutes are endlessly repeated until you’re tired of seeing them. Fact is, video is a linear medium that sometimes isn’t very efficient at advancing coverage of a story.

On the other hand, text – lowly text – may turn out to be more efficient. Text isn’t real-time. Its order can be rearranged on the fly by the reader. It can point to other things – video, photos, charts, diagrams, reference information. More important, it can be skimmed to quickly find only the pieces you’re looking for. With mobile devices, text can be transmitted by anyone, quickly and easily.

In the past week, the most compelling coverage of the protests in Iran hasn’t been on television, it’s been on the internet via Twitter. Thousands of people have been tweeting, reporting what they have seen and pointing readers to photos and video clips posted on YouTube.

Why more compelling? First, it has democratized the reporting, giving access to thousands of eye-witness reports from all over the country, rather than the accounts of a few correspondents who may not have the breadth of access that the thousands of volunteer eye-witnesses do. Perhaps just as important,  the short texts are skimmable, and a number of websites have endeavored to collect and sort through the raw reports. Twitter and YouTube have made coverage that is customizeable by readers. No more Wolf Blitzer endlessly filling time while awaiting new developments.

A funny thing has happened on the way to the YouTube revolution: video everywhere has elevated the role of text. People want to watch video, but on their own terms and not in a linear stream decided by someone else. The easiest way to sort information isn’t by video, it’s by text. Why do people text one another rather than dial their phones and talk? Texts, in an odd way, seem easier.

In the next week or so, Google will release its Google Voice service, which will take your voice mails and convert them to text transcriptions which can be emailed to you. Why? Because voicemail can be clumsy; text takes the interaction online, where it can be controlled by the recipient. It might be easier to record a voice message, but reading that message is more efficient than dialing in to listen to a recording.

That is not to say that listening to someone’s voice – the tone, the inflection, the nuance – doesn’t provide more information than text. And text doesn’t convey the visual experience of video. But in the future, video and audio might be considered the drill-down rather than the headline, a curious flip of the media world we have recently known where TV has offered the raw immediacy and newspapers weigh in later to add the depth.

Share:

  • Click to share on X (Opens in new window) X
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window) Tumblr
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window) Pinterest
  • Click to print (Opens in new window) Print
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email

Related

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Douglas McLennan

I’m the founder and editor of ArtsJournal, which was founded in September 1999 and aggregates arts and culture news from all over the internet. The site is also home to some 60 arts bloggers. I’m a … [Read More...]

About diacritical

Our culture is undergoing profound changes. Our expectations for what culture can (or should) do for us are changing. Relationships between those who make and distribute culture and those who consume it are changing. And our definitions of what artists are, how they work, and how we access them and their work are changing. So... [Read more]

Subscribe to Diacritical by Email

Receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 3,851 other subscribers
Follow Us on FacebookFollow Us on TwitterFollow Us on RSSFollow Us on E-mail

Archives

Recent Comments

  • David E. Myers on How Should we Measure Art?: “A sophisticated approach to “measuring” incorporates all of the above, with clear delineation of how each plays a part if…” Nov 3, 16:20
  • Tom Corddry on How Should we Measure Art?: “Reading this brought to mind John Cage’s delineation of different ways to experience a Beethoven symphony–live in concert, on a…” Nov 3, 01:58
  • Abdul Rehman on A Framework for Thinking about Disruption of the Arts by AI: “This article brilliantly explores how AI is set to revolutionize everything, much like the digital revolution did. AI tools can…” Jun 8, 03:49
  • Richard Voorhaar on Classical Music has Lost a Generation. Blame the Metadata (in part): “I think we’ve lost several generations. My parents generation was the last that really supported, and knre something about classical…” May 15, 12:08
  • Franklin on How Subsidy for Big Tech Wrecked the Arts (and Journalism): “Language, yes; really characterization. Investments and margins don’t become subsidies and taxes whether or not markets “are working” – I’m…” Mar 8, 07:13
  • Douglas McLennan on How Subsidy for Big Tech Wrecked the Arts (and Journalism): “So what you’re arguing is language? – that investments aren’t subsidies and margins aren’t taxes? Sure, when markets are working.…” Mar 7, 21:42
  • Franklin on How Subsidy for Big Tech Wrecked the Arts (and Journalism): “Doug: You can, if you like, buy a jailbroken Android, install GrapheneOS, and sideload apps from the open-source ecosystem at…” Mar 7, 16:17
  • Douglas McLennan on How Subsidy for Big Tech Wrecked the Arts (and Journalism): “Franklin: Thanks for the response, But a few points: My Chinese solar panel example was to make the point that…” Mar 7, 12:46
  • Steven Lavine on How Subsidy for Big Tech Wrecked the Arts (and Journalism): “Terrific essay, with no prospect to a different future” Mar 7, 09:53
  • Franklin on How Subsidy for Big Tech Wrecked the Arts (and Journalism): “The economics of this essay are incoherent. The CCP was creating yuan ex nihilo and flooding it into domestically produced…” Mar 7, 08:49

Top Posts

  • Are Orchestras A Ticket Or An Art? Maybe We're Thinking About The (Made Up) Model Wrong
  • Is The Institutionalization Of Our Arts A Dead End?
  • We Asked: What's the Biggest Challenge Facing the Arts?
  • Creativity Versus Skills
  • "Art Is Good?" Not Much Of An Argument For Art Is It?

Recent Posts

  • Creativity Versus Skills January 12, 2025
  • How Digital AI Twins could Transform how We Make Art January 7, 2025
  • How Should we Measure Art? November 3, 2024
  • Classical Music has Lost a Generation. Blame the Metadata (in part) May 13, 2024
  • When “Vacuum Cleaner for Babies” Beat Taylor Swift: Fixing the Music Streaming Problem May 6, 2024
June 2009
M T W T F S S
1234567
891011121314
15161718192021
22232425262728
2930  
« May   Jul »

An ArtsJournal Blog

Recent Posts

  • Creativity Versus Skills
  • How Digital AI Twins could Transform how We Make Art
  • How Should we Measure Art?
  • Classical Music has Lost a Generation. Blame the Metadata (in part)
  • When “Vacuum Cleaner for Babies” Beat Taylor Swift: Fixing the Music Streaming Problem

Copyright © 2025 · Magazine Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in