A panel discussion on “Reading in a Digital Age” at CUNY’s Macaulay Honors College engaged students and their elders through the dinner hour on November 11—with enough questions following the formal session, to keep the speakers tied up well past the program’s formal end time. Moderated by Bill Goldstein, founder of the New York Times Books section online, and Times reviewer for Today in New York, panelists included Adam Moss, editor of New York Magazine; Lisa Holton, former president of Scholastic Books and founder of Fourth Story Media; Ben Vershbow, now a digital producer in Strategic Planning at the New York Public Library, and previously a fellow at the Institute for the Future of the Book; and Macaulay Dean Ann Kirschner, author and long time digerati, who recently wrote about the explosion of reading experiences now available to the reader in an article for the Chronicle of Higher Ed on “Reading Dickens Four Ways.”Moss talked about how readers approach content in the paper magazine differently from online content, and how editors increasingly have to respect the differences. “We publish something on the web,” he explained, “and then readers have at it.” One article, about a Hasidic woman who left her community, generated 1500 comments, and they were, he admitted “much more interesting than the story we told.” Meanwhile, the physical magazine is becoming “in some ways, an object. We want people to fetishize that object.” Moss noted that even though newsstand sales are down, subscriptions are up significantly.
Lisa Holton saw many parallels to the way teens are engaging in her company’s first online/offline property, The Amanda Project, which consists of a book series and a highly interactive site where users create their own characters and contribute to the story line. “You start building a house, and then invite everyone in to help you. . . . You have to lose control a little bit” when you ask people to contribute to your existing content, “but you have to embrace that risk.”
Ben Vershbow addressed academic publishing, which is plagued by high costs and a diminishing market, arguing that some of that publishing, which is already moving to a digital and POD realm, will have to be undertaken by libraries, which are also considering hosting academic conferences.
Ann Kirschner talked about students’ approach to research: “If it’s not available digitally, it’s almost as though it doesn’t exist.” But, she noted, “content is beginning to find its natural platform,” and as users become more conversant with the options, they will be able to adjust to the best method for any given reader experience.
Kirschner also summed up the dilemma facing many users of digital content, especially those on the web: “You can say unmediated, or you can say democratic,” it all depends on how open you are to the experience.
