Our lives are stressful. We are awash in stimuli, busy putting out fires, cranking away, focused on getting through the everyday and paying our bills. We end up caught in the endless scroll of life.
The result is we don’t have space to think deeply. In an interview on the Journey On podcast, neurologist Stephen Peters speaks to a study that showed what happens when our brains are given breathing space. Using a functional MRI to measure a human brain with no outside stimuli, researchers found something interesting.
“Pretty soon the brain starts talking to itself,” Dr. Peters said. “The brain starts connecting ideas to ideas, and then it gets deeper, and it makes more affiliations with other areas in the brain. And soon you are thinking at a much deeper level about things.”
Having no time without outside stimuli leads to a lack of these deep-thinking moments and in turn to grave issues for our mental health. Attention-deficit is not an individual phenomenon, I’d say, it’s societal.
That’s where a print publication like Moonshine Ink shines. When you read it, there are no pop-up ads, no videos that come out of nowhere, and the page is self-contained; there is no endless scrolling. You get a moment to yourself, to read and ponder deeply. The Ink also strives to keep its digital platform as clean and distraction-free as possible.
The master of news satire, The Onion, is catching up with our little Tahoe/Truckee newspaper. This past summer, the publication decided to re-launch a print edition for the first time in more than a decade.
“I think for the same reason that 18-year-old kids are buying Taylor Swift on vinyl,” Jordan LaFlure, The Onion’s executive editor, told The New York Times, “we can introduce those same kids to the notion that a print publication is a much richer way to consume media.”
The self-proclaimed “America’s Finest News Source,” The Onion, is also rethinking its advertising model, reportedly halting ads from Taboola, those attention-grabbing, article-looking ads (don’t get me started) at the bottom of many news sites. I would guess the publication will be courting new advertisers, but in the meantime, one of the “ads” in the print relaunch had this headline: “It’s That Sweater You Clicked On Once. We Found a Way to Follow You Into Print Media, Too.”
As with many news sites that want to maintain free and equal access, The Onion plans to keep its website available to all. The company’s subscription page reads, “While America’s Finest Membership offers various additive benefits, The Onion website will remain freely available to every calloused reader who refuses to surrender their credit card information.”
All this talk about print demands that I share this short gem (see below) that I’ve cherished for a decade-plus. It was originally introduced to me by our Shine On cartoonist, Mike English, right after it published — one of many, many blessings of this incredible man.
While some might say print is dead — and interestingly, I think this sentiment rang through the halls more loudly in years past — there are reasons it will never disappear. Our ability to think better when using paper, not a screen, being not the least of them.
Print quiets the noise. It’s like walking in a forest and listening to the trees creak, the water tinkle, and the birds chirp. You can hear these sounds because the chatter has died down.
With luck, sweat, and tears, Moonshiners will continue to produce the print edition in perpetuity. Tell your brain it can thank our members (and advertisers).
Why I still love paper
By John McWade
Published Jan. 22, 2013, in Before & After
The reason I read a paper magazine or book is for the time it gives me — for the space to think, reflect, pause, return, re-read, and so on, until what’s on the page has morphed from an idea to something deeper.
Online, and even on a tablet, is a different experience. There’s a light in my face. There’s an urgency. It has no closure; there’s always another click, an eternal, forever, world-without-end-amen stream of data rushing, flowing, pounding, demanding, agitating.
Paper gets me away from that.
When all voices are equal, I have to listen to all voices. I can’t afford this mentally, emotionally, or physically. When all data is available, I have to process all data. I’m not big enough.
Paper edits for me.
I once worked with a guy to make a hobby magazine in PDF. His content was 100% from a large online forum. I asked him why he’d do this — why he’d charge for the exact content that hobbyists could get for free online.
He said it’s because the forum is like a river; the water flows by and downstream and away. The magazine dips in and scoops some out, stopping it. It adds images, typography, visual rhythm, and alters its environment, and in so doing it changes the experience by giving me space.
It’s an important quality that we can’t afford to lose, and my guess is that we won’t.
Yes, some paper publishing is for tradition or power or status quo or because it’s what we’re used to. These things will change. But the essential ways in which paper is truly superior, these are here to stay.
Talk to me.
