Digital may be instant, but your newspaper comes with some free extras

Despite digital news being easier to access and far more current, the humble newspaper is still on top when it comes to holding our attention according to recent reports in The Australian and The Times. I’m relieved as this means advertisers will take note and the newspaper may continue for a bit longer.

We’re continuously being told how much better and easier it is to have everything delivered to our screens, but as I spend all day staring at it, I personally love getting away from it in my down time.

Being a home worker, I enjoy a morning walk to the newsagents to buy my several printed sheets and later in the day, I’ll leave my desk to lounge on the sofa with cup of tea to read them. If I’ve got time, I’ll do the crossword and the sudoku and if these are unfinished, I’ll leave the page hanging around for a couple of days hoping there will be a ‘light bulb’ moment and ‘2 Down’ will finally come to me without the need of a thesaurus.

As well as stimulating the little grey cells, there are a few other benefits of having the odd newspaper kicking about the house. Where would we be without a stack of newspapers when it comes to drying wet shoes, ironing wax out of carpets, keeping the kids amused by making papier mâché objects (sorry, ignore that one, the kids are too busy playing on their DSs or iPads), and lining cat’s litter trays and bird cages? I’ve been more than thankful for the pile of papers ready for recycling when I’ve broken some china, needed to clean a window, or cover the floor when doing a bit of DIY.

A newspaper’s insulation properties are also great – can you wrap your tub of ice-cream in a tablet when you’ve forgotten a cool box? And I’m sure a few tramps will feel decidedly colder under a blanket of tablets. Furthermore, if everything goes digital, what will James Bond or Private Investigators discretely hide behind when staking out street corners? Villains will also have to diversify and find an alternative in which to surreptitiously hand their accomplice a fire arm.

I could go on and wax lyrical about a used newspaper’s ability to help with lighting wood burners and stuffing scarecrows, however I will leave digital news/tablet reader advocates with a couple of challenges:

1. Swat a fly without damaging the window or your tablet.

2. Use a tablet to successfully steady a wobbly table.

Please, don’t keep telling me digital is best – why would I give up all the free extras which come with a newspaper?

Communications – the ancient way

Sporting events are big business. Spectator numbers and general awareness equate to sponsorship deals and with the UCI WorldTour cycling race, the Tour Down Under taking place in Adelaide this weekend, promotions for the event over the past few weeks has been immense.

Having worked on the communications for several exhibitions, shows and sporting events I speak from experience. If it’s a big event, the ‘ability to multi-task’ is a necessity on the job description. Fortunately there is usually a team to help coordinate the multitude of print and broadcast media as well as updating the website, facebook and twitter at regular intervals.

In amongst the mobile phone’s dulcet tones and manically hitting the ‘send’ or ‘update’ button, being a bit of an ancient history nerd, I have occasionally pondered how promoting an event and communicating results to the masses must have been in ancient times.

For one thing, the communications manager (if there was such a thing) would probably have been a lot less stressed as there were fewer ways of getting the message out there!

In ancient Greece and Rome, to get current news, unless you were ranking high enough to be sent a piece of papyrus, you’d have to wander down to the local agora (market place) and look for carved messages on walls or listen to the local town crier (known as a stentorian).

As an aside, the word stentorian is thought to derive from the Greek warrior Stentor, a herald in the Trojan War. His voice was apparently as powerful as the voices of 50 men.

Having found out the news from the local stentorian, thereafter I assume it would have been word of mouth. Instead of an instant click of a pc or mobile phone button, there would be a whisper in the ear and it would be several hours before the whole city knew about it, and probably a few days to reach neighbouring towns .

For a forthcoming event, I’m guessing there would have been a lot of advanced planning in its promotion. Many ancient events such as the Olympic Games were based on rituals and hence scheduled around planetary activity. In some cases ancient mechanical calendars were used to decide on the date of the games. Once the date was established, with travelling time as it was back then, it could take several months to get the message to the appropriate audience. Not too much has changed here given the deadline of some print publications.

The first postal system was developed by the Persian King Cyrus the Great to help control his new empire and it was improved a generation later by Darius I of the Achaemenid Empire. He extended the road network across the Persian Empire and this enabled both troops and information to move by comparison, at lightning speed. The royal road from Susa to Sardis, about 3200 km, had posting stations where new men and fresh horses would be available at any moment to carry a document the next leg of the journey.

This system sped up the time a message spent in transit enormously and some messages travelled up to 200 miles a day.

The ancient Egyptians were the first to domesticate pigeons and the ancient Greeks used pigeons to deliver messages from at least 5BC. Genghis Kahn developed their potential fully, using them to carry news of each new conquest to back to Mongolia.

Beacons were used to denote victory or a warning, but fire was also used as part of the first semaphore system as described by the Greek historian Polybius (203-120 BCE). Both parties would have a set of five tablets on which the alphabet had been divided into groups of five letters. To send a message, the signalman raised a torch one to five times on his left side to signal the tablet from which the required alphabet would be obtained. He then signalled one to five times on his right side to denote the position of the character on that tablet.

As for circulating event results, the Romans established a pretty elaborate display of gestures which could be read from afar where voices wouldn’t carry. However for non-local fans, they would just have to wait to see if their favourite athlete or gladiator had won.

And if their hero did win, then I’m guessing they thought some things were really worth waiting for.

A tribute to the Royal Mail

Having recently returned from a short spell overseas, (hence a bit of a gap in my blogging), I was reminded just how remarkable and enjoyable the postal system is. I can’t help but think how amazing it is that by handing over a relatively small sum of money and putting a piece of sticky paper on a postcard/letter/parcel, this usually ensures the eventual delivery of the item to the person who’s name and address is written on the it, particularly when the said person is in another country.

When I was working in a rural area of Yunnan Province, China, I inadvertently tested the system when I couldn’t quite remember the house number or street of the person I was sending a postcard to in the UK. After writing their name on the address side of the card, I wrote a description of the house, directions from a notable landmark in the village, the name of the village followed by the county and country.

I was seriously wondering whether the postcard would actually make it at all to UK when I posted the card in a very tiny post office in the remote Chinese village. How many people would handle that postcard en route to its destination I pondered? There was the man behind the counter, then the person taking it to the larger office in a town a few hours driver away. Then it had to find its way to an airport…. And hopefully it would get on the right plane. Once in UK, it would once again have to be sorted to find its way to the right county and then the correct village.

On my return, I discovered the post card had indeed found its way to my friend, and the diligent postman had actually knocked on the door to check the name of the person in the house before handing over the postcard!

Now that was personal service. In this digital age where everything is instantaneous and we need instant gratification people seem to have forgotten to know what it’s like to wait. In my days of travelling, I wrote a weekly letter home to tell my mother I was safe and what I’d been up to. Sometimes my mother received a weekly letter but more likely, especially when I was travelling in a less developed country, she didn’t hear from me for three or four weeks. Then of course, she’d receive several letters on the same day a few weeks later.

As a backpacker to collect my post overseas, it meant queuing up at the Post Restante part of the post office in the hope that now you were out of sight, your friends hadn’t put you ‘out of mind’ and your friends had not only bothered to write a letter, but they had gone to the post office to post it as well.

Call me old fashioned, but there is something special about receiving a hand written letter or postcard from a friend or colleague. While I was away, I sent some postcards back to nieces and nephews who apparently were very excited to be handed a postcard when they collected the post. It saddens me that the art of letter/postcard writing is dying out for an instant text message, or worse still, for the rather impersonal cc’d email to all. Whatever happened to the personal touch?

But there is one major advantage of hand written letters over email, as highlighted by my postcard from China – if you’re not sure of an address, or if you happen to misspell a name, generally the posted letter will find its recipient. Plus if there’s a power cut, you can still access the contents.

The art of cursive writing

Some educators seem to think longhand should be phased out as technological advancements mean we’ll all be using keyboards. Imagine a world without cursive writing. We won’t be wondering whose phone number is written on the back of the person’s hand. No more ‘masterplans’ scribbled on the back of cigarette packets; the fridge will be clear of scribbled notes telling house members you’ve gone out (although I’m suitably informed text messages are stopping this practice anyway). But I’m curious to know what will replace post stick note reminders in the work place or even a signature at the end of a legal document.

Facebook statuses and tweets will reminisce about the joys of walking into a stationary shop, ink stained fingers and clothes, and trying to decipher doctor’s notes.

But what else will we be losing? The physical act of writing with a pen stimulates different parts of the brain than typing at a pc, and the physical act of writing something down often makes it easier to recall. Some also claim if you can’t write cursive, then you’ll actually find it harder to read it too; so by not teaching cursive we’d be depriving a generation of the ability to read historic scripts or even old family letters.

As a wordsmith, I love writing with my fountain pen; I like the way it glides across the paper and the care I have to take to not smudge the ink. As technology encourages us to speed up, writing with a pen slows me down – making me choose my words carefully and, as I haven’t hit the delete button, I can revisit crossed out thoughts. Plus when I’m writing creatively, the slower pace allows other story lines to come in. It’s worth noting at this point, many famous authors write their novels in long hand before sitting down at the pc.

When I’m interviewing people either over the phone or in person, I write down the conversation, admittedly by using a mixture of long and T-line shorthand for speed. Shorthand is already a dying art as conversations can now be electronically recorded. But trying to find the part of the recording with the quote you want is time consuming – plus electronic equipment does malfunction resulting in a vital quote being lost.

But perhaps the greatest loss should cursive writing cease will be individuality. Ask any graphologist, handwriting is as unique as fingerprints to an individual. Even though we’re taught the same shapes, we develop our own style – have you ever tried to copy someone else’s signature? Our writing also apparently gives hints to our personality and in some cases (although not mine) is far more appeasing to the eye than a typed script.

So for the case of individuality, memory and creativeness, perhaps after all, the pen really is mightier than the technological sword.

Welcome.

It’s been a long time coming, but my blog is finally here – welcome!

I am lucky in my role of freelance journalist and communications consultant, and in my personal life to associate with a wide variety of people from a diverse range of industries. This leads to an assortment of experiences, encounters and good conversations, many of which deserve more than a random mention down the pub.

In this blog, I’ll share some of these episodes, together of course with a few thoughts of my own; I do have penchant for trivia, a love of the ancients and have been known to be quite vocal on certain issues. That said, although I have a few strong views, the blog will not deteriorate into a rambling soap box.

The phrase ‘work/life’ balance is used a lot these days but unless you’re of the privileged few, work, by definition, is an essential part of life. Fortunately, as a writer, I actually enjoy imparting knowledge through the written word and as this blog is just one example of my work, feel free to get in touch!