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Slow food, slow travel, slow cinema, slow fashion, slow gardening: There
are so many slow movements that you might think homo sapiens as a
species was in an irreversible entropic downshift into the pace of slugs and
snails. But of course, slow movements exist mostly to be a counterpoint to
the ever-increasing speed technology seems to have brought into our lives.
It wasn’t that long ago that news was mostly something you consumed once
or twice a day — a newspaper in the morning, perhaps, and Walter Cronkite
at night. The frequent buzzes in your pocket, though, make it clear how far
away that era feels in a time of mobile phones and constant connection.
Of the more than 2,000 people in the sample, in the end, only 180 accepted
and then used their free Zetland subscription. About a quarter of those
consumed only 1 or 2 articles during the two months, but the average in the
group was about 11 articles. (One person consumed over 100; I very much
hope they signed up for a paid subscription when the study was over.)
Zetland publishes a lot of long, in-depth stories, so that’s not terrible
engagement, but you can see it follows the by-now-familiar power-law
curve so much Internet activity does.
The surveys included items asking about how and how frequently people
consume news, as well as how much they experience news fatigue.
(Examples: “I feel overwhelmed by the amount of news available,” “I feel
exhausted by too much news,” “I am tired of news filled with negativity.”)
Andersen wanted to see if news fatigue or news use affected slow-news
consumption, as well as how slow-news consumption affected news fatigue
or news use.
The results: People who felt more news fatigue were less likely to use
Zetland’s slow news. But people who were already consuming more news
on a regular basis were more likely to use their Zetland subscription.
In other words, Zetland was more attractive to people who were already
consuming a lot of news than to those who weren’t. And it was less
attractive to people feeling a lot of news fatigue than to those who weren’t.
That…makes a lot of sense. People who already consume a lot of news are
probably people who enjoy getting a lot of news, and they’re more likely to
be interested in trying out a new news source. And people who feel
overwhelmed by the onslaught of headlines aren’t likely candidates to
become big consumers of something new. But Andersen’s findings do go
against one of slow journalism’s strongest pitches — that it could draw in
new and different kinds of audiences than other, faster news sources
already do. Emphases mine:
Keeping in mind that this is a single case study, the results have shown
that slow news is most likely to attract those who already use a lot
of news and are not feeling news fatigue. In other words, slow news
is most likely to attract those who may benefit the least. This
possibility has previously been highlighted as a potential obstacle for
the slow journalism movement and is now empirically confirmed by
this study.
In addition, the results have also shown that when people consume
slow news, they become more tired of news.
Thus, slow news, at least in the case of Zetland, ends up having the
opposite effect than what the slow journalism movement aims for.
These findings underline that the slow journalism movement needs to
think carefully about how slow it should be to succeed in practice…
ILLUSTRATION OF “LE LIÈVRE ET LA TORTUE” — A.K.A. “THE HARE AND THE TORTOISE” — FROM LA
FONTAINE: FABLES CHOISIES POUR LES ENFANTS (1888) BY LOUIS-MAURICE BOUTET DE MONVEL.