I remember reading the Reader's Digest regularly when I was growing up. I would visit my grandmother and find very little to read except a seemingly endless collection of old copies of the Reader's Digest, stacked on end tables and spilling out of cardboard boxes in the basement and attic. Now my exposure to the Digest is mainly confined to visits to doctors' offices; if I have to wait long enough, I'll read anything when I've forgotten to bring a book along to pass the time.
Just last week I saw a December 2000 issue of the Digest and spent about 10 minutes paging through it, reading one article about the benefits of deep breathing (very useful in a doctor's office!). Suddenly, it occurred to me that every day, I'm reading the modern equivalent of a reader's digest when I go through my news readers and check what I want to read and what I want to delete (mostly I delete).
Of course a major difference in reading blogs and other news feeds in contrast to reading the Digest is that I'm collecting information from sources that I want to check regularly rather than relying on editors to collect that information for me. I'm somewhat in the position that editors and reporters are in when they scan incoming feeds on breaking stories, with changing feeds from UPI, AP, and other news reporting bureaus. Even though I more often delete postings rather than reading them, I still have an opportunity to scan the topics and pick and choose. I can get a sense of what's happening, even if I choose not to follow what's happening in depth and detail. For the directions that I do choose to follow, I can follow them from a multitude of perspectives.
Another big difference is that when I do read a blog posting that summarizes the contents of a longer article, I can then go on and read the original article, and frequently go from there to reference articles and resources--many of which are on-line.
Another important difference is that most blog postings provide opportunities to comment, either directly at the blog site, or indirectly by re-posting to your own blog site. This interactivity or blog rolling provides a dimension that goes far beyond old-fashioned letters to the editor. Anyone who keeps a blog for long will end up with a network of online colleagues who share similar interests and read one another's postings about ideas, information, and new resources.
However, I have noticed that the comments feature of most blogs is usually little used. When I want to communicate with a blog author I typically send email rather than adding a comment. In my own blogs and in my EduResources Portal, very little use is made of the comments feature nor of the discussion option. Readers seem to want the information and the ideas, but do not want or need to take the time to respond to each item that they scan.
Interestingly, most blog postings that are re-postings are actually much shorter than a Reader's Digest article (usually a paragraph or two, plus the link to the original). Even the original blog articles or stories are usually shorter than a typical Reader's Digest article (blog articles are 1 to 3 pages vs RD articles of 4 to 6 pages). We seem to have entered an era of ultra digests. (And now mini-bit communicating is going even further with person-to-person cell phone text messaging.)
So what does it mean that modern blogs resemble the old Reader's Digest? I'm not sure, but readers of blogs and readers of the Digest seem to share some commonality of intent and purpose in their rapid absorption of quick, bite-sized information and entertainment. What does it mean that blogs have a very short life span while Digest's have a long life span? Although old Digests seem to go on indefinitely in attics and doctor's offices, blog postings are electronically evanescent, here today and gone tomorrow. The sense of permanence that was present in old magazines has been replaced by a sense of immediacy and impermanence in the new media. Perhaps the sense of participation and ownership that is present in the new media makes up for the loss of permanence and stability that was found in the old media. What do these stylistic communication differences mean for the use of blogs and news readers in instructional settings?
11:09:00 AM 
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