Author: David Churbuck

Cape Codder with an itch to write

Digressionary Print Formats

The cover story of the current issue of the Atlantic Monthly is by David Foster Wallace on the subject of talk radio. I enjoyed the piece, and as always Wallace’s great writing but I’d like to draw attention to the design of the article, specfically the use of sidenotes to accomodate and encourage Wallace’s penchant for digressions, footnote, and asides.

The best way to understand the design of the piece is to buy a copy of the magazine. A PDF is available online to subscribers, but the online version has some elements that try, but don’t truly express the concept.

"[Editor’s Note: In the print version of this article additional commentary from the author appears alongside the main text. (Subscribers may scroll down this page for a link to an Adobe PDF version of the article.) In the version below, click the phrases within the colored boxes to read the commentary.]"

 

The text of the article is occasionally highlighted in colors — think of the highlighter function in Microsoft Word — which signifies that the reader should look to the side of the main text for the appropriately colored box which contains a side note. Each color denotes a different type of sidenote. A footnote may be yellow, an editorial note blue, etc.

Wallace is a master of digression, a writer similar to Thomas Pynchon in his love with spiralling detours down the path of minutia, paths which can either lead the reader to despair of ever picking up the main narrative, or delight them if their taste in detail and complexity follow the author’s. In Infinite Jest, Wallace’s sprawling novel about tennis and Alcoholics Anonymous, he resorts to footnotes, a serious irritation to a reader who must flip to the end-notes to follow along. Thankfully, Wallace just keeps advancing the footnote counter through the entire novel, rather than following the academic practice of resetting the counter every chapter which forces the reader to seek the chapter’s section of footnotes, and then to that chapter’s specific note.

The practice of running footnotes right at the foot of the main text is more convenient, but nevertheless forces the reader to drop the narrative, move to the tiny type, and then return to where they left off.

What the Atlantic Monthly accomplishes is a very elegant solution to page design — one of the more innovative advances in print I’ve seen in some time and the best solution for hypertext concepts I have seen in print.  The "ergonomics" work well, the notes are easier to access due to their formatting adjacent to the main point, and there are no tiny superscript numbers cluttering the text. The colored highlights break the text snake of the mainbar like highway signs, making departure and return simple.

There are a lot of solutions to the problem of accomodating digressionary content. Hover balloons, IntelliText advertising, or good old fashioned hyperlinks can all accomplish the job online. The Atlantic has presented a print solution which could, if adapted, be a very elegant model for online design. 

Minor Irritations are turning into a Major Force

Today’s NYT has a front page piece on  people rebelling against life’s little irritations — Starbuck’s having the conceit to call a medium-sized cup of coffee a "Grande", annoyed users turning to Bugmenot.com to get user names and passwords for registration-walled websites, people returning postage-paid junk mail envelopes to sender filled with pieces of scrap metal to drive up the postage costs.

In an article I wrote for CMO Magazine last fall on the after-effects of the national Do Not Call registry which effectively ended telemarketing, I quoted Seth Godin on the concept of permission marketing and the growing sense of irritability among consumers over intrusions by clueless marketers. He predicts a future where consumers will be induced to listen to a pitch or receive a spam in return for some reward.

My sense is that consumers are at a boiling point due to unrelenting assaults by spam, phishing, identity theft, pop-ups, page-takeovers, registration-walls, that a vocal minority will begin to fight back in ugly ways. I was unaware that Slashdot once posted the address of a notorious spammer and urged its hordes to overwhelm him with junk mail, bogus subscription offers, etc..

This leads me to postulates Churbuck’s First Rule of Online Media: Don’t piss off your traffic. Every aspect of online operations, design, and commercialization needs to be analyzed in the context of this commandment.  Any violation of the law will surely result in a fast sweve by the traffic to a more friendly alternative.

State of Online News

Online: Introduction

The Center for Excellence in Journalism has released its annual state of journalism report. This is a link to the online section which points out, correctly, that while the trend is the friend for online growth, the lack of a viable economic model with the margins seen historically on the old media side is limiting spending and development despite the ad renaissance. 

Online Publishers Association: Paid Content Sales Rise in 2004

Online Publishers Association: Press Releases

The news here is the decline in the sale of business/investment content — down 6.3% from 2003. Bear market? Beardstown Ladies out of the market? Not likely. More plausible is the general realization by consumers that little business/investment content is truly unique and if not available from one source, can be located elsewhere.

 Research is up 6% but still a relatively small market at $115.1 million.

 Here’s the list of what I pay for:

  • Accuweather Premium: because I am a weather freak
  • WSJ.com: because I always have and probably always will.
  • Highbeam Research: because I need good research capabilities for my freelance writing
  • Vault.com: because I’m looking for a job and need access to employer profiles
  • Mediabistro: because I freelance and need access to a marketplace for assignments
  • Morningstar: because I do a lot of mutual fund related freelancing and need access to premium level research (and which I just cancelled).

The Surveillance Society

Drivers charged in plow scheme (March 12, 2005)

This rocket scientist driving a snow plow had to carry a GPS equipped phone so the state highway department could track his whereabouts. What does he do? Ditch the phone in a paper bag at a coffee shop while he does a private plowing gig at a nursing home, return, and gets nailed by the state police. 

Internet Ad Spending Numbers

TNS Media Intelligence

Numbers released earlier this week show a 21% gain in Internet advertising from 2003 to 2004. Placing the category sixth — after a steep fall off behind cable TV — at $7.4 billion.

 Although elections and the Olympics helped the surge, the general comeback of ad spending and the nearly 10 percent increase is directly correlated to the economy stabilizing out of its two-years of softness from 2001 through 2004.

 The big issue is sustainability and how the next business cycle will affect advertising allocations from the Big Five of newspapers ($24.5 bn), network television ($22.5 bn), consumer mags ($21.2 bn), spot tv ($17.3 bn) and cable ($14.2 bn).

 Given Google’s report that it did $1 billion in ad sales — I infer from Adsense — in Q4 2004, and extrapolating a ramp up across 2004 to $3 billion for the year, I wonder if ad word sales constitute the majority of the Internet spend as opposed to ad units and sponsorships sold directly by site ad sales staffs.

Some breakouts of the Internet ad spend are needed. The category is big enough and credible enough to deserve more parsing. 

 

 

 

 

Digital Deliverance: The Digital Edition Dirigibles

Digital Deliverance: The Digital Edition Dirigibles

 

A good piece on why PDF-based publications stink and are the Zeppelins of our age.  

 

While I am at it, does anyone think Zinio is a good idea? I subscribe to the MIT Tech review via the format and honestly think the technology is rotten. Hard to believe anyone is serious about preserving print design in a digital format.

Ray Ozzie goes to MSFT

Not too surprising to see Microsoft acquire Groove Networks — Microsoft was an investor in Ray Ozzie’s p2p project — and it makes sense to see Ray ascend to the triumverate of CTOs. Ozzie’s invention of Lotus Notes was hailed, justifiably, as a great leap forward and created the new category of "Groupware."

I hate Lotus Notes. I loathe it. I think, all other things being equal, if I had to chose between working at two companies — one running Notes, the other running Microsoft Exchange — I would go with the Exchange environment every day.

Notes was the ugliest, most user-unfriendly application I’ve ever endured. This is not surprising given Lotus’ brain-dead approach to user-interfaces in the early 90s, when CCMail — it’s evil email client — had icons that were drawn by participants in a split-brain experiment.

Don’t take my word for it. Notes sucks. 

Google News Customization

In my morning crawl of the news sites I see that Google News — the perdurable beta news aggregator — has initiated a customization function.  It seems a little more useful and less inbox-crushing than the old model of email alerts off of keywords. In the end, it’s just an old "My Yahoo" customization tool driven by keywords.