It's
an exceptionally quiet Monday on my corner of the net, there's hardly
any movement. Multiply is as dead as door nail, a couple of my others
web pages are like death half warmed up; is the end of the world
predicted so many times actually arriving? Just as well I can still
carry on with my daily custom of reading the morning paper with my
wake-me up coffee in my usual coffee haunt.
I chose 'El Pais', one of the reputable national papers in Spain. I rarely bothered with the digital section, but I did today and was rewarded with the most amusing news story, of what the Spanish would say "pincha pincha" which, roughly translated in this case, would be "poetic justice" I reckon. The star story is about a Polish man who visited a Brothel, and had the shock of his life to find his own wife exercising the world's oldest profession there.
This news item not only achieved the record of being star of the week with 100,300 viewers, but also commented upon as the most interesting and the item most times being sent round the world by email. Yet on the printed press it was not even briefly mentioned. While with the digital edition all is registered in detail: how many times viewed, when, where, to a certain extent even whom by. One can also leave comments like you do with a Blog or on somebody's page.
Before this the winning news was the revelation of the identity of the person behind the Spanish national anthem, a down and out unemployed from Cuenca, with 44,400 visits, which would have crowned the web but now down to 2nd place. This opens up a lively and controversial debate of the day, with 437 comments when I last looked at it.
Then there's a short analysis comparing the number of book readers to the now popular digital story readers. The relevant figures of book readers are usually estimated by how many copies sold. This is nowhere near accurate as to how many people who read it. You buy a book, but that gets passed around to family, friends, later gets dumped perhaps into the 2nd hand bin or Car-boot sales. As to comments, what you take the trouble to pencil down on the margins of the book is read by few or no one else; or by mouth when you recommend it or condemn it. Online, even if you go back to take a 2nd look it's recorded.
No idea why I even bother to write about this. I would never give up reading a book or newspaper the traditional way because I love it. My relationship with the book or paper is personal. What others think or do with them is none of my business.
