Subject: Re: Stats From: meyer@newslink.org (Eric Meyer) Date: Fri, 6 Sep 1996 21:00:41 -0500

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>With a linear presentation, the stories at the top will be the most read.
>With an intelligently designed interface, you can let the content drive
>story readership rather than user endurance.

The thing we all have to recognize is that very few people read very many
stories period. Even a devoted newspaper reader might read quite a bit
fewer than 5% of the leads in the paper, and follow an even smaller number
of stories to their conclusion.

Contrary to popular belief, headlines exist not to lure people into reading
stories but more likely to tell readers what stories they don't have to
read. "Jobless rate rises 0.1%." That's all I need to know. Only we
journalists and a few anal retentives sit down and patiently read one story
to its conclusion, then move on to the next.

The advantage of hypertext, I believe, is largely in its ability to offer
additional "entry points" into a story -- though the term "entry point" is
somewhat flawed. In truth, they are informational points -- the tops of
inverted pyramids of information.

One this hypertext along with other design tools has done is allow us to
move the informational efficiency that inverted pyramids offer away from
the text itself, which can then be written in a more sensorily powerful
narrative style.

Someone I was talking to recently (I wish I could remember who) used the
analogy of the old multi-deck headlines -- the type that NYT and WSJ
readers often still see -- restored to their original 5- and 10-deck glory.
That's the value that hyperlinked headlines can have. But in this case you
can, if you wish, bypass all the narrative and go first to the one nugget
of information that particularly interested you.

That, dear friends, is interactivity.



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