I've been trying a cheap trial digital subscription to the Boston
Globe. So far, it's not working for me. True, the site is updated
constantly, so I see the latest news headlines, there are videos to go
with the news stories, I can search the news for a particular item, and I
can read it on any of my machines, including my iPad mini. But the
screen display is of a bunch of headlines with various font weights,
some with the first line or two of the story. What I see is a random
display of headings -- I don't know what's important at a glance. With a
paper newspaper, the locations and layout of the pieces help me create a
quick strategy for how I'm going to spend the next twenty minutes
reading the paper. I can see how long the articles are at a glance -- I
don't have to waste time and click on each headline link to get the gist
of the story.
Worse, there are ads on the display, whereas
there are no ads on the front page of a paper. It's not always
immediately clear on the screen when you're looking at an ad --
"Shocking prediction by CIA insider" (an ad) looks like it's an actual
news story when it is next to "US, allies, launch more air strikes in
Syria, Iraq" (a news headline). I have tried the e-paper version, which
shows the actual paper version of the pages, but I found it cumbersome
to keep enlarging the screen and scrolling.
The overall result is that by the end of the day, I'm simply reading less of the Boston Globe.
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