The vast majority of students we work with read newspapers and books, more so than I did at their age. And I don’t see that dropping off. If anything the lack of faith comes from people our age, where we just assume that it’s dead or dying. I think we’ve given up a little too soon. We [i.e., McSweeney’s] have been working every day on a prototype for a new newspaper, and a lot of what we’re doing is resurrecting old things, like things from the last century that newspapers used to do, in terms of really using the full luxury of the broadsheet newspaper, with full color and all that space.
I think newspapers shouldn’t try to compete directly with the Web, and should do what they can do better, which may be long-form journalism and using photos and art, and making connections with large-form graphics and really enhancing the tactile experience of paper. You know, including a full-color comic section, for example, which of course was standard in newspapers years ago, when you’d have a full broadsheet Winsor McCay comic. So we’ll have a big, full-color comic section, and we’re also trying to emphasize what younger readers are looking for, what directly appeals to them. It’s hard to find papers these days that really do anything to appeal to anyone under 18, and the paper used to do that all the time.
via Salon.com Books | Dave Eggers’ heartbreaking work of staggering reality.
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from jeffmacintyre.com: Dave Eggers on children and print culture http://bit.ly/2bMmS0
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Dave Eggers on children and print culture http://bit.ly/2bMmS0: “I think we’ve given up [on print] a little too soon” (via @jeffmacintyre )
This comment was originally posted on Twitter