[M T]

Now, more than ever before, I understand why the newspaper business is in trouble.  I remember reading stories like that when I was a student.  The stories were pretty good at setting the scene and explaining what had happened a day or two earlier.  This story had a similar level of depth and quirky Stanford-oriented detail.

And yet, here in 2014 even water polo can be streamed over the internet.  Even if I didn't watch live, there was plenty of time to catch the replay.  And even if I didn't want to watch a full match, there is a GREAT Youtube video that allows casual fans to feel like they were sitting with the team poolside.

Hard to compete with all of that even if your article is provided for free.

However, there are more things that can be done with text than can be done with video.  Did you learn about WWII from the raw movies of the fighting at the time, or from the articles written about it?  (or did you learn the "Hogan's Heroes" or "Combat!" version of WWII?)

There's been a lot of research at capturing information from video, but it is clear that people are infinitely better at summarizing the events in text (or spoken text).  Maybe someday we'll be able to "summarize" or "document" video automatically, but not yet.  Human-generated documents will be better for search or a quick overview.

Unfortunately, descriptions of events are colored (unintentionally or not) by the (literal & figurative) viewpoint of the viewer, and those are recorded as the history of the events.  I'm sure the Stanford and UCLA accounts of the game differ, which presents challenges for a future analysis of what happened.  Imagine the differences in German versus English accounts of WWII.  Video of events will remove some of that, but will still have issues with the literal viewpoint(s). 

I hope newspapers and other periodicals can survive, with some veneer of accurate reporting.

[M T]

Now, more than ever before, I understand why the newspaper business is in trouble.  I remember reading stories like that when I was a student.  The stories were pretty good at setting the scene and explaining what had happened a day or two earlier.  This story had a similar level of depth and quirky Stanford-oriented detail.

And yet, here in 2014 even water polo can be streamed over the internet.  Even if I didn't watch live, there was plenty of time to catch the replay.  And even if I didn't want to watch a full match, there is a GREAT Youtube video that allows casual fans to feel like they were sitting with the team poolside.

Hard to compete with all of that even if your article is provided for free.

However, there are more things that can be done with text than can be done with video.  Did you learn about WWII from the raw movies of the fighting at the time, or from the articles written about it?  (or did you learn the "Hogan's Heroes" or "Combat!" version of WWII?)

There's been a lot of research at capturing information from video, but it is clear that people are infinitely better at summarizing the events in text (or spoken text).  Maybe someday we'll be able to "summarize" or "document" video automatically, but not yet.  Human-generated documents will be better for search or a quick overview.

Unfortunately, descriptions of events are colored (unintentionally or not) by the (literal & figurative) viewpoint of the viewer, and those are recorded as the history of the events.  I'm sure the Stanford and UCLA accounts of the game differ, which presents challenges for a future analysis of what happened.  Imagine the differences in German versus English accounts of WWII.  Video of events will remove some of that, but will still have issues with the literal viewpoint(s). 

I hope newspapers and other periodicals can survive, with some veneer of accurate reporting.