Mark Armstrong

The New York Times has just published its latest “Snowfall”—or as I like to call it, Massively Multimedia Epic Heave (MMEH)—and it’s a doozy. “The Jockey,” written by Barry Bearak, is a story about Russell Baze, who at 55 years old, is the winningest jockey in North American racing history.

What I love about the story itself is that it’s an education about someone’s life and career. There is no massive tragedy or plot twist—it’s about one person’s career decisions, and how they impacted his family and his life.

Why did the Times decide to Snowfall this piece in particular? I suspect it has to do with the fact that horses are beautiful animals, horse racing is a thrill to watch, and that afforded them an opportunity to create a visually immersive experience. 

Better still, the Times got a sponsor for the story, BMW, so that they could better integrate advertising into the experience. That’s a huge advancement from what they did with Snowfall, which was just drop in some banners.

So, that was what I liked about the story.

Here’s what I didn’t like about it: This story forced me into a multimedia experience that I did not want. I just wanted to read the story, but instead I was asked to go get headphones, be attached to an Internet connection, and then watch videos after short bursts of reading.

A lot of companies are trying to sell us on multimedia storytelling being “the future,” but I actually don’t want that. At all. I wasn’t into it the first time, back when they were sold as CD-ROMS, and I’m not into it now.

I love watching video, I love listening to podcasts, and I love reading. But most of the time, these are singular experiences. I am doing them separately, depending on whatever mood I’m in.

“The Jockey” also was broken up into short chapters, which seems to be a cute new way of paginating a story even though we all agreed that paginated stories on the web were a sub-par reading experience. If the Times added a “view all chapters” button (thanks, @erikmal) then we’d be set.

I’ve always argued that publishers can and should make their stories “an event.” But we still need to be mindful of not harming the actual reading experience—or overshadowing what is otherwise a great story by Barry Bearak.

Or maybe I’m just a Cranky Old. What do you think?

Nate and I met with GigaOm founder Om Malik last week, and we had an interesting conversation with him about his reading habits—what he’s interested in, and what he likes to share with others via his frequent “What I Am Reading Today” posts. Afterward we sent him his personal stats for saving and reading inside Pocket—here’s what he did with it:

In his post, Om sounds a little dejected about his “open rate” in Pocket, saying that “I was only reading about a third of what I was saving.”

But fret not, Om! There is a misperception that Pocket should be treated like an email inbox, in which you have to go back to every single story or video that you’ve saved. Pocket works best if your “net consumption” is better than what it would’ve been without save for later. This means either:

1. You are consuming, on average, more worthwhile content than you would have without Pocket, or
2. You are consuming higher-quality content than you would have without Pocket.

My open rate is probably abysmal, because I am a digital hoarder. But I end up consuming exponentially more/better stories in a given day than I would have without Pocket.