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Software allowing editors to completely lay out their newspapers have stripped newspapers of all of their character.
Case in point - when's the last time you read a 'bus plunge' story in the newspaper. Years ago, it seemed like you could count on reading a story of a bus load of people plunging into a ravine almost every week. Buses haven't gotten any safer in most of the world - in fact, a more open society in China means we should be able to read even more bus plunge stories - but you almost never see 'bus plunge' stories anymore.
We no longer get to read stories, such as:
In the old days, when newspapers used the old mechanical type sets, they never knew exactly how the newspaper would look until the typesetters were finished laying out the newspapers. The bus plunge stories were great for filling awkward spaces in the newspaper since you could edit out as many extraneous details as necessary to make the story the right length. For example: the last sentence in the above story could easily be deleted without detracting from the story (although including it certainly adds to the aesthetic quality of the story).
Readers' fascination with these stories were a key reason for Hollywood's obsession with having all sorts of vehicles plunging off of mountain roads and bursting into flames in mid-air.
Readers here in Colorado Springs are certainly fascinated by the story when another tourist manages to circumvent the brake temperature check at Glen Cove on the road down Pikes Peak and is rewarded for his cleverness by having his brake fluid boil away. Pikes Peak is a big enough tourist attraction that there's always drivers coming up the mountain to provide an eye witness account of the reactions of the hapless driver trying to navigate the hairpin turns on the road down Pikes Peak before their car ultimately plunges off the side of the mountain, usually killing everyone inside (in one of the more fascinating incidents, the driver turned tried turning off the ignition, upping the challenge to navigating the hairpins with no brakes and and no power steering).
Now we have to be satisfied with perusing bus plunge stories on the web (Bus Plunge!) This is much less satisfying since, once again, the digital age eliminates the need for strategic editing. No more does the reader spend 10 minutes pondering why the bus plunged off the road, how the bus was spotted at the bottom of the ravine, how some of the passengers could have possibly survived a plunge into a 1,000 foot ravine, or what emotions were running through the passengers' eyes as they peered desperately out the windows of the plunging bus. All the details are provided with little need for thought or imagination by the reader. It's just not the same.
Case in point - when's the last time you read a 'bus plunge' story in the newspaper. Years ago, it seemed like you could count on reading a story of a bus load of people plunging into a ravine almost every week. Buses haven't gotten any safer in most of the world - in fact, a more open society in China means we should be able to read even more bus plunge stories - but you almost never see 'bus plunge' stories anymore.
We no longer get to read stories, such as:
In the old days, when newspapers used the old mechanical type sets, they never knew exactly how the newspaper would look until the typesetters were finished laying out the newspapers. The bus plunge stories were great for filling awkward spaces in the newspaper since you could edit out as many extraneous details as necessary to make the story the right length. For example: the last sentence in the above story could easily be deleted without detracting from the story (although including it certainly adds to the aesthetic quality of the story).
Readers' fascination with these stories were a key reason for Hollywood's obsession with having all sorts of vehicles plunging off of mountain roads and bursting into flames in mid-air.
Readers here in Colorado Springs are certainly fascinated by the story when another tourist manages to circumvent the brake temperature check at Glen Cove on the road down Pikes Peak and is rewarded for his cleverness by having his brake fluid boil away. Pikes Peak is a big enough tourist attraction that there's always drivers coming up the mountain to provide an eye witness account of the reactions of the hapless driver trying to navigate the hairpin turns on the road down Pikes Peak before their car ultimately plunges off the side of the mountain, usually killing everyone inside (in one of the more fascinating incidents, the driver turned tried turning off the ignition, upping the challenge to navigating the hairpins with no brakes and and no power steering).
Now we have to be satisfied with perusing bus plunge stories on the web (Bus Plunge!) This is much less satisfying since, once again, the digital age eliminates the need for strategic editing. No more does the reader spend 10 minutes pondering why the bus plunged off the road, how the bus was spotted at the bottom of the ravine, how some of the passengers could have possibly survived a plunge into a 1,000 foot ravine, or what emotions were running through the passengers' eyes as they peered desperately out the windows of the plunging bus. All the details are provided with little need for thought or imagination by the reader. It's just not the same.
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