As more readers go online to read their newspapers, the newspapers of the near-future—say, 2011— will look a lot like and read a lot more like the web, or so the theory goes via today’s IBD. Here’s a news flash: The slides flipping past during an NAA presentation at the UBS conference last week demonstrated that a large part of that future is already here. It’s particularly obvious in advertising as ads break from the straightjackets of the past and take over the page, splashing across in patterns, pushing the text down the page, clamoring for attention in the most clever of ways. The pragmatist in me says, oh, goodie, at least there are ads and they appear to be working. But the reader—and the reporter—in me cringes when text becomes hard to follow or somehow seems secondary to the ads. Online, splash ads, interstitials, cute cars driving across the screen usually can be made to disappear. Not so in print. It’s a reminder that what works in one medium doesn’t always translate.
That doesn’t mean it can’t. Good examples of the webification of print editions increase everyday. Unfortunately, so do bad.