Completing the Picture

I wasn't sure how to approach reading both the San Jose Mercury Newspaper and the Online version of the paper. It wasn't the reading part I couldn't handle, it was the approach to comparing the two that seemed to pose a problem. Now, I generally try to read the paper version of the Mercury everyday, but realistically, it happens about every other day. On the day I decided to compare the two versions, I sat down at the kitchen table, with the Saturday paper and my laptop. On my laptop I had the internet opened up to the Mercury News . As I sat there, I seemed to be swimming in a world of current (or at least daily) news. It was at this time that I decided to narrow down my search to determine the differences in printing. I set my sights on the Sports section.

Let's face it, on Friday night (for the Saturday edition), there isn't much going on in the wideworld of sports. The biggest news was baseball in the Bay Area and golf. On the front page of the sports section there was a story involving the Oakland A's hunt to clinch their division title. There was a picture with captions letting readers know that Barry Bonds broke Hank Aaron's home run record by hitting yet another home run. There was a huge picuture of Tiger Woods which took up almost half the page. What seemed to be most prominent about the front page of the sports section was that the reader can actually begin to read the article to get an idea of what it is about and then they have the option of whether or not to turn the page to read the rest or the article. After finally getting passed the front page of the sports section, I got to the "insides." What I found inside is that, it is the heart of the section. It is on the "inside" that you find articles that are not local. I found articles on many key sports teams/people that are not in this area. I also found that there are one page dedicated to each Bay Area baseball team, yet all other teams have small articles and share the page with quite a few advertisements.

When it comes to the online version of the Mercury News (at least the sports section), the online version seems to fall short of the print version. What you find on the sports page is group of links, all the same size, color, font and they stand out in no way shape or form. There are only two articles that are introduced with a paragraph proceded by a link to find the rest of the story. To me, the online version lacks the ability to give the reader the experience of reading a newspaper to get current events that are tied in with pictures and something that the readers can relate to. Although there are local articles within the online version, they seem empty because they are being read through a computer screen that makes your eyes go fuzzy when you stare at the screen for too long (or maybe that's just me).

Whichever version a reader decides to read, they choose the version for their own reasons. My loyalty lies with the printed version because it, to me, creates an experience that cannot be compared to staring at a computer screen.