The Wall Street Journal recently reported on the decline of young people who say they read "for fun" and the battles in public school over whether "classic" books should still be assigned reading.
How did we get to the new communication world today in which reporters blog, AI "reports" and most "reading" occurs on cell phones?
Here are a few clues.
TV and the Internet Changed Writing
Look at a book written before TV existed and you'll see it takes its time. Not competing with the Colgate Comedy Hour or the Alcoa Hour for attention, its narrative feels free to wend and digress as the pastime it's supposed to be.
(People even indulged in the "pastimes" of gathering around the piano and singing together in those days.)
Its type is small, margins thin and there are no prefaces, introductions and forwards to inspire you to read it; someone picked it up because they wanted to read it!
Look at a book written before the Web and it's similarly surefooted and composed though it is competing with the Bill Cosby Show and CNN. It knows it's a book and still has small type and thin margins. It doesn't reduce information into digestible bits--yet.
Flash forward to books written since the Web and many are breathlessly competing for your attention with interaction abilities and QR codes. (Wait! There's More!) Even their titles scream for attention like: How Reading This Book Will Help Make Your Life Better In One Day.
Of course, in a world in which Too Long, Didn't Read and Too Much Information are abbreviated and many think voice mail takes too long, it's no surprise that the writing found in books and newspapers is vanishing.
Who Remembers Newspapers?
Newspapers have been fighting for marketshare since the 1970s when morning TV shows supplanted the preferred radio-and-the-newspaper way to wake up.
Once upon a time, TV was something Americans watched after dinner or during dinner (see TV dinner) not when they woke up. The TV was kept in the paneled "den" along with decks of cards and Scrabble set. Nor was TV programming available 24/7.
When someone boarded a bus or train (or tried to talk to their dad or grandad) they were face-to-face with a newspaper. The "newsprint curtain" was such a commuter institution, poet Allen Ginsberg satirized it by poking a hole in his paper and peering through it on a New York subway.
Sure cable TV ate into reading time, but it wasn't until people brought the Web with them on laptops and handheld devices that newspapers were defunded and finally retired.
As readers sought instant, easy-to-read, personalized information especially Friends and Followers and Fans, advertisers followed the exodus and newspapers were defunded. The world of cookie/preference-based "relevance" and clickbait followed.
"People won't pay to read yesterday's news," remarked a media analyst who said home delivered printed newspapers were as archaic as home delivered milk.
Not Writing But Typing
In 1957, writer and national wit Truman Capote said that some feted authors were "not writers; they're typists."
What would he think of today's climate in which universities deem listening to a podcast "reading" and reporters talk and podcast rather than write? What would he think of smart phones, speech recognition and spoken word apps and of course AI? When a printed page is Too Much Information?
(Article changed on Jul 27, 2025 at 3:36 PM EDT)
