Today in TYCG: Matt Taibbi on Newsracks
Things You Can't Google (TYCG): Convenience from digital advancements has atrophied our search muscles.
In 2007, perhaps 2006 or 2008, Matt Taibbi wrote about newsracks. Yes he's a hard-hitting journalist covering the great vampire squids of global predatory finance but first and foremost he's a newsman.
The Offline Report (TOR) wants the city to bring back the lively colorful metal newsracks. The ones replaced by the grayscale "clean" Clear Channel newsracks in 2007.
Tristan Harris, the digital addiction apostate formerly employed by Google and Facebook, advises three actions to people trying to cut the frequency with which they check their smartphone. Action one is to grayscale your phone. "Warm colors attract your attention," says the narration of Vox's interview with Harris.
This is why print media needs those warm colors from the pre-Clear Channel metal newsracks.
Next Harris advises people disable push notifications on their phones to cut down their addiction and redirect their attention.
Print media needs more attention. Local alt-weeklies specifically need more attention. Seven years after the bright lively colorful metal newsracks were replaced in 2007 by the grayscaled Clear Channel newsracks, the San Francisco Bay Guardian folded after forty years in business.
Colorful newsracks, because they were variegated by publication, worked as push notifications to the pedestrian across the street.
Yellow for the San Francisco Bay Guardian, red for the SF Weekly, red with a distinctive freshly-painted logo for the SF Examiner, green for El Tecolote, blue for the Nob Hill Gazette, etc., etc.. You could spot one with a fresh stack of papers inside the little newsrack window from afar. "How exciting, this is the day the new issues are out. I wonder if A.C. Thompson wrote the cover story." What a 2006 thing to say.
Finally, Harris advises those wishing to check their phone less frequently to clear their home screen of apps you don't use, especially apps that do not offer what "Revenge of the Analog" author David Sax calls "finishability."
Dead tree editions of any newspaper offer finishability. There is no endless river. This medium is finite tactile and is New York Times tech reporter Farjad Majoo's news consumption format of choice.
Those are just the arguments we can remember for bringing back newsracks. Taibbi in his 2007 blog post offered a few other reasons the then-proposed Clear Channel grayscaled homogenizing newsracks could suppress circulation of smaller papers like the New York Observer. But that post is lost to TYCG.
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Further reading: days before Manjoo extolled the virtues of paper, TOR described A 'Paper Interface': What? (See also: How and Why.)
A bright eye-catching newsrack advertises in its own colors and font "Free Every Week." In 2009 The Onion went online-only.
In 2007, perhaps 2006 or 2008, Matt Taibbi wrote about newsracks. Yes he's a hard-hitting journalist covering the great vampire squids of global predatory finance but first and foremost he's a newsman.
The Offline Report (TOR) wants the city to bring back the lively colorful metal newsracks. The ones replaced by the grayscale "clean" Clear Channel newsracks in 2007.
Tristan Harris, the digital addiction apostate formerly employed by Google and Facebook, advises three actions to people trying to cut the frequency with which they check their smartphone. Action one is to grayscale your phone. "Warm colors attract your attention," says the narration of Vox's interview with Harris.
This is why print media needs those warm colors from the pre-Clear Channel metal newsracks.
Next Harris advises people disable push notifications on their phones to cut down their addiction and redirect their attention.
Print media needs more attention. Local alt-weeklies specifically need more attention. Seven years after the bright lively colorful metal newsracks were replaced in 2007 by the grayscaled Clear Channel newsracks, the San Francisco Bay Guardian folded after forty years in business.
Colorful newsracks, because they were variegated by publication, worked as push notifications to the pedestrian across the street.
Finally, Harris advises those wishing to check their phone less frequently to clear their home screen of apps you don't use, especially apps that do not offer what "Revenge of the Analog" author David Sax calls "finishability."
Dead tree editions of any newspaper offer finishability. There is no endless river. This medium is finite tactile and is New York Times tech reporter Farjad Majoo's news consumption format of choice.
Those are just the arguments we can remember for bringing back newsracks. Taibbi in his 2007 blog post offered a few other reasons the then-proposed Clear Channel grayscaled homogenizing newsracks could suppress circulation of smaller papers like the New York Observer. But that post is lost to TYCG.
----
Further reading: days before Manjoo extolled the virtues of paper, TOR described A 'Paper Interface': What? (See also: How and Why.)
A bright eye-catching newsrack advertises in its own colors and font "Free Every Week." In 2009 The Onion went online-only.
