I heard the pre-selected news today, oh boy
Customized online newspaper services give you more control over the information onslaught -- but less serendipity.
By LAWRENCE S. DIETZ
"One copy of The Times contains more useful information than the whole of the historical works of Thucydides." That was an English politician named Richard Cobden talking, and his Times of London was, of course, pre-Rupert, Cobden being a 19th century radical.
Whatever Cobden's politics, his faith in the value of the newspaper has remained constant among what used to be called the ruling classes (a noted dissenter was George Bernard Shaw, who remarked that "Newspapers are unable, seemingly, to discriminate between a bicycle accident and the collapse of civilization"). Today, however, the worth of the newspaper is being openly questioned, in large part because it is considered stunningly old-fashioned, a 19th century piece of technology abandoned by the masses, who prefer their news delivery in the 20th century package of television.
The primacy of the print newspaper is not only under attack from television (media for the masses), of course, but from the computer (still a medium for the educated elite). It is an article of faith that we are at sea on a flood of information, a situation in which the computer is both curse and blessing -- the former because it gives us immediate access to even more material, the latter because it gives us the belief that we can manage it.
The Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times have taken a big first step toward allowing readers to "manage" the information they get. The Journal is offering what it calls the Personal Journal, a "custom edition" delivered to "your PC or straight to your printer." (This latter option is pretty clever, since one of the major financial burdens a publisher has to bear is the cost of paper, printing, and delivery. If the Journal can get its readers to print their own paper themselves, while paying $12.95 a month for the privilege, it will have achieved something akin to convincing a diner to go to a temple of haute cuisine, like New York's Lutece, and to wait on his own table.)
The Personal Journal software program allows a reader to choose a combination of 25 companies and Journal features, as well as 25 stocks and mutual funds. In addition, the PJ will deliver the news columns from each day's front page, a sports section (to blunt the appeal of USA Today), and three-day weather forecasts from around the world (ditto).
The L.A. Times is now supplying its Web site visitors with a service called "Hunter, our News Retriever ©." The paper indulges in some goofy canine anthropomorphism by identifying Hunter as an extremely cute golden retriever, and running a column under the dog's byline. (Mmm, there's a writing job.) You get to choose from "pre-defined topics" (business, sports, leisure, general, and regional) which may come from the Times or from wire services, and some material only from the Times -- columns, sports columns, "editors' choice," obits, polls, L.A. stories, and op-ed pieces.
This week the Chicago Tribune announced that its Tribune Media Service is teaming up with Mercury Mail (an online information service out of Denver) to offer a free e-mail delivery of news, weather, sports, stocks and entertainment, in paragraph form to fit your personalized profile.
What's missing from these creations? Only serendipity. Which happens to be one of the great pleasures of reading -- that moment when you're suddenly struck by a marvelous phrase, or an image, or an argument that you weren't expecting to find and that stops you in your tracks.
In periodical journalism, you may be on your way to an article you know you want to read, or the sports section or movie listings, when your eye is caught by a headline or an ad, the equivalent of meeting an interesting person over a cup of coffee at Starbucks.
As it happens, serendipity is one of the stronger points of both the L.A. Times and the Journal. The Times runs a piece in the far left hand column of its front page, called Column One by the people in the newsroom, which most often is a story you couldn't predict you'd get from watching the 11 p.m. news. Last week there was a piece about parents in New England who were jailed for invoking a non-existent legal doctrine, family privilege, and not testifying against their son, accused of a brutal sexual assault. (Before you say, "Of course they should have ratted him out," know that the cops and D.A. already had enough physical and eyewitness evidence to convict the kid.)
The Journal publishes a similar piece, known as the A-hed, each day in the middle of the front page. One of my favorites, which ran in April, 1995, had to do with the fierce rivalry between Robert and Armand Zildjian, two Armenian brothers in their 70s. Their father, Avedis, had founded the Zildjian cymbal company, and if you've ever cared a whit about popular music, especially jazz, you've heard Zildjian cymbals being played.
Robert and Armand clashed over control of the company after their father's death in 1979. Robert lost, but got the firm's Canadian branch (which he renamed Sabian), as well as the secret of how to make a great cymbal. Robert and Sabian are now Armand and the Zildjian Company's fiercest competitors. It was a story worthy of Shakespeare -- well, OK, Arthur Miller or David Mamet.
Would a PJ subscriber have gotten that story? How do you say "Surprise me" to the PJ software program, or to Hunter? And what's the value of being surprised? To quote another Brit, Samuel Johnson, "Curiosity is one of the most permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect."
Perhaps the next step in "managed information" should be a "random" function like that on a CD player, which will throw in the odd Cain-and-Abel saga along with the mutual fund updates.
Last week the Journal ran an A-hed about the decline in custom tailors, a trade going the way of milk and bread delivery to the home. Men, it seems, are still buying very expensive clothes -- sales of suits in the $1000-plus range are up 30 percent. But while they'll buy an Italian designer suit for $1500 to 2 grand, they won't spend that same amount for a custom-made garment.
As someone who goes to winter sales and dives for Armani goods at deep discount, I sat over that A-hed and wondered if I was simply a brand-conscious schmuck, or if Armani's cut and fabrics justified the tab -- not that I dress up to sit at the computer.
Great tailoring, like great writing (and editing), is a matter of hand crafting. That we look to something machine-made in clothes, and to high-tech delivery of pre-sorted information, is not surprising: we pretend that the wit evidenced in the devices we invent is an adequate substitute for the wisdom we need.
Lawrence S. Dietz is editorial manager at the News & Reference and Regional sections of Excite. He is a regular contributor to Media Circus. He can be reached at LSDietz@ix.netcom.com