"New media and the Slow Death of Written Words"

Mark Zeltner, the author of the article “New Media and the Slow Death of Written Word,” starts by saying how he likes printed news better than news on the internet. Mark Zeltner acknowledges that the younger generations dislike newspapers, and would rather read the news on the internet. He is different from the other writers who believe that the new media is taking over the way news is portrayed. Mark Zeltner says that the new media is not completely new, “it is a compilation of many aspects of all the old traditional mediums.” Mark Zeltner agrees with other writers that the new media is changing our society, but he does not think that it is completely destroying the printed news.
I agree with some points that Zeltner makes in his article, but there are some points that I do not. Mark Zeltner says how the computer is bad for the eyes, and I agree fully with that, but the writing in the newspaper is not much bigger than the words on a computer screen. Staring at a newspaper for hours like some people do cannot be much better than reading the information on the computer. With the technologies we have now a person can enlarge the writing on a computer screen until they can read it unlike the newspaper where the most you can do is put on magnifying glasses. I disagree with Mark Zeltner’s point about the way the information is being consumed, whether reading it on a piece of paper or a computer screen, the words have the same meaning and the point of the article is still the same.
Mark Zeltner’s 10 rules for writing for the new media have some valid points. Rules 1, 2 and 3 are about gaining the reader’s attention and keeping it through the entire article while informing them of all the facts. Starting with rule 1 “Just the facts ma’am or keep your writing tight, tight, tight,” I agree that the writing has to be short, but have all the content it needs to have needs to be in it. Rule 2 “Anything over a screenful is a waste or click vs. scroll,” also has a valid argument because our generation and today’s society do not have the time to read articles that are too long. An article has to be interesting in order to engage a reader enough to make them want to go to another page of the article. Rule 3 “No Page is an Island or think in modules not chapters,” I agree with the fact that the writer should make it hard to miss important information, because most people will just skim an article for important facts rather than read the entire thing.
Rules 4, 5, and 6 are about keeping the reader entertained while not taking away from the effect the article is supposed to have on the reader. Rule 4 “A picture is worth a couple thousand words or when to embed images and when to just write,” I completely agree with this because I am more likely to pay attention to an article that has interesting pictures and I would be able to know what the article is going to be about before reading it. Rule 5 “Did you hear that or when a sound is more important than words, “ I disagree with this rule because if I were reading an article I would not wait for a sound clip to download, I would just read the article and hope that I did not miss anything from the sound clip. The part about adding music as a background is a good idea, but it cannot be distracting music. I can listen to my i-pod while reading and understand what I read, but if the music were like elevator music it would distract me even more. Rule 6 “Did you see that, or when a video clip is more important than words,” is another rule that I would disagree with because the fact that I would not want to wait for the video to download in order to watch it, so I think it would be a waste of time because most of the readers would not watch it.
Rule 7, 8, 9 and 10 are more about the structure of the article, and ways to keep the reader paying attention and not steering off to other websites, either through hyperlinks or to look something up. Rule 7 “Huh, What’s this or when to use descriptions and definitions,” is useful because if the definition is not on the page and the reader did not know what it meant, they would probably stop reading the article to look up the meaning, and this would distract them from the reading. Rule 8 “Ever take a trip without a road map or why hypertext is a wonderful, dangerous thing,” is another rule that I would agree with because hypertext will distract readers because they would click on them to see where they bring them and what they are about. Rule 9 “Want some fries with that or why sidebars can be an important part of every document,” is a rule I disagree with because when I am reading an article and there is a sidebar and it is very unlike that I actually read it. I think it is important to keep the reader focused on the main document. Rule 10 “Sometimes you can tell a book by its cover or why content and form are both important,” is an important rule to me, because the way the information is presented to a reader is very important because if it is in an interesting form and colors the reader will be more likely to want to read the article and more likely to pay attention while reading. Mark Zeltner states how he thinks that written words are not completely dying off but it is important for a writer to have other technologies in their writing in order to make the reader entertained.