A World Tour — Via Its Front Pages

Throughout the last several years, as news outlets have struggled at times to find their place in the online world, many newspapers have experimented with "electronic editions" — fully downloadable versions (often in PDF format) of their newsstand product. While some function better than others, many are infused with a slough of useful navigating tools, from search features to zooming capabilities, making the process of reading a newspaper on a computer screen quite similar to holding it in your hands. Minus, of course, the gray stains on your fingertips, the somewhat cumbersome task of folding the paper just right, and the lack of portability (to the bathroom, for instance).

Many newspapers continue to offer some form of an electronic edition on their Web sites — usually accessible only if your willing to pay subscription costs — but this style of presenting a newspaper online has never really caught on ... for several reasons (namely, some require additional software on your hard drive and many are far from user friendly).

Slate's Jack Shafer expounded on the drawbacks of electronic editions in a PRESS BOX piece several years ago headlined "Honey, They Shrunk the Newspaper, Part 2," saying that "reading electronic editions of newspapers makes you feel like a fat man trapped inside a size-too-small iron suit."

Shafer went on, however, to extol the practices of two electronic editions (Florida Today and the Guardian) — simplifying the navigation and including both a PDF newspaper page and HTML copy side-by-side. And I couldn't agree more with Shafer about the benefits of being able to view the actual newspaper on screen:

...displaying the newsprint page next to enlarged stories makes a huge contextual difference. Habitual newspapers readers generally read their newspapers as a total unit, or at least one section at a time, and the placement and size of an article provides a wealth of useful information: Is it a column, a news story, a feature, an editorial, etc.? Is it from the "Science" section or the "Home" section? Is it above the fold, and therefore the biggest news, or is it below the fold, therefore not as urgent? Much of this contextual information is lost on straight Web versions.

Perhaps none of those reasons persuade you to open your wallet and subscribe to the electronic editions of individual newspapers, especially when their Web sites are free. Understandable. But if you love newspapers and are curious about how the news plays in various parts of the country or world, check out Newseum's site. Here you'll find nearly 600 PDF versions of Today's Front Pages from newspapers across the globe. (There's also more than a dozen online exhibits worth visiting, from Pulitzer Prize Photographs to Stories of the Century to War Stories.)


The collection is searchable in two ways: 1. Scroll through several pages of small, tiled images (four dozen per page) that appear larger and in color to the right of the screen as you roll the cursor over them. Click on one of the tiny front-page images and up pops another window with a larger display with links to the paper's Web site and to a PDF file that enables viewers to actually read the text of the stories. 2. Use the "Map View" to search the world. Click on a "location dot" and the aforementioned window appears with the newspaper from that locale.

Despite not being able to look past the front pages and deeper into the newspapers (it does, however, provide links to their Web sites if you see a story you'd like to read in its entirety), logging on regularly to this site is a wonderful way of viewing the news of the day — anywhere and everywhere. It also allows, as mentioned above, users to see what is making news where and how different newspapers treat the same stories. If you were a fan of the "Morning Papers" segment during CNN's NewsNight with Aaron Brown — which was disturbingly cancelled in November 2005 (this will definitely be discussed in more depth in a future entry) — then you'll enjoy browsing Newseum's virtual, worldwide newsstand.

Your Thoughts
Do you subscribe to any electronic editions? What do you like and dislike about them? If not, would you ever consider subscribing to and reading one? What do you think of the Newseum feature, "Today's Front Pages"?

'I Just Died': The future of obits has arrived

The death of columnist and humorist Art Buchwald at the age of 81 was big news on Thursday — in newspapers, on television and on the Internet. But perhaps the bigger news is how one media outlet presented it. While obituaries have long been a staple feature in newspapers, the New York Times reinvented the obit today through the smart use of its Web site. "Hi, I'm Art Buchwald and I just died," announced the humor columnist and Pulitzer Prize winner in an innovative obit video produced from Tim Weiner's interview with Buchwald in July 2006 but not posted until after his death Wednesday night.

The Times, as Weiner points out in his introduction of the video obit, has "a long tradition of interviewing some of the world's most interesting people about their lives for their own obituaries." While that is true, it's an entirely different experience to hear someone say "I just died" as you watch that person on screen. According to the Times, the Buchwald video obit was the first in a series called "The Last Word." As the piece's producer David Rummel told Editor & Publisher: "It is an oral history project. ...It is a chance to give them the last word." Weiner added that 10 other people, including a former president, have been interviewed for the project, and he hopes to conduct three to four new interviews each month. Some, including another former president, have declined his requests, he told E&P, adding that the identities of both those who have agreed to participate and those who have refused would remain secret.

In the Buchwald obituary package posted on its site Thursday, the Times has provided yet another example of the remarkable value of online journalism (which, by the way, is completely different than "citizen journalism"), without abandoning the traditions of the print medium. Those yet to view the unusual but compelling obit might wonder how it is different than what one might see on, say, CNN. Weiner aptly articulated the clear distinction to E&P: "It is the guy talking about his life in a way that television would never take the time to do, but that holds to our standards." By utilizing both the print-edition obituary and the technologically advanced version on its site, the Times has shown that the Web can function the way it once seemed it would for the periodical press — not as a fierce competitor but as a invaluable, supplemental storytelling tool.

Perhaps this rethinking of the obituary will stick and forever alter the way obits are produced and received — not just by the Times for its readers, but for all media and its consumers. Perhaps it is a major step forward for the printed press in realizing the weaponry available to it on the Web. Either way, one columnist's death and the way in which one news outlet covered it is likely to be a landmark event in the history — and future — of journalism.

Your Thoughts
What do you think of the Times video obit of Buchwald and the idea of "The Last Word" series? Will it have lasting impact on obituaries or online journalism in general? Or is it merely good work by the Times with no real influence on how other media will craft obits in the future? Is it simply a trend that will cease when "The Last Word" series does? Post your comments.