Thursday, October 30, 2008

The Wrong Stuff: Tom Wolfe on the new new Journalism


Edon Ophir interviews Tom Wolfe for The Ithican Online.


It’s obviously going to go online, which presents a certain number of problems. Young people, if my own children are any indication, will turn right to the Internet to get particularly breaking news, because the Internet gets it so much faster than radio or television. In Madison, Wis., where the University of Wisconsin is, the newspaper has stopped printing completely. It’s completely online. One problem with it is computer screens are backlit, and it’s very hard to read anything at length if you’re reading a backlit screen. It’s just irritating. The second problem is the computer scrolls, I’m sure you’ve noticed that, you can’t turn a page, it scrolls. You know the monks were so happy to get rid of those damn scrolls in the 14th century and get pages and here we are back at the scrolls, and so it’s very hard for any new idea to get hold except in some medium where you can read at length without it bothering your eyes. Maybe the Kindle will solve that. I haven’t heard enough reports about the Kindle.

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