Read It and Don't Weep

Caleb Crain's article in this week's New Yorker magazine is brilliant. It's entitled "Twilight of the Books," with the subtitle, "What will life be like if people stop reading?"

He shares a lot of good data about the decline of reading in America (though we are by no means unique in this trend). I learned that:

• In 1/2004, 49% of respondents to a survey done by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press said they'd read a newspaper the day before. In 2006, that number dropped to 43% and included papers read online.

• According to the NEA's "To Read or Not to Read," American households' spending on books "is near its twenty-year low."

What interests me more than this data is his coverage of the early history of reading. It gets better: he discusses different types of media as learning tools.

He mentions a study that involved a PowerPoint presentation. Some test subjects read the information silently, while others read along with the audio presentation. "The silent readers remembered more," he writes, and they were also more likely to agree with the statement that "The presentation was interesting." (There. More proof that PowerPoint presentations are deadly.)

However, when Crain touches on television and other streaming media, he makes the point that these media - and not reading - generate a unique emotional responsiveness.

"Streaming media give actual pictures and sounds instead of mere descriptions of them," writes the author. We can get a much fuller sense of a person we view in a video or on TV than by merely reading about that person in print.

In fact, says Crain, "There is nothing like this connection in print. A feeling for a writer never touches the fact of the writer herself, unless reader and writer happen to meet. In fact, from Shakespeare to Pynchon, the personalities of many writers have been mysterious."

Crain does an excellent job of covering the experience of reading vs. the experience of viewing something in a new media. Quite insightful.

When I finished the article, I was reminded of a message that's echoed throughout the printing industry in 2007: successful communication nowadays is about integration of various media. It's not just about the printed word.

If it weren't for newer media, I couldn't write this next sentence. Read Caleb Crain's article for yourself; it's online at www.newyorker.com. I still prefer reading it in the magazine, but I am so glad it's available online as well.