Here’s a question to consider: when you see an interesting headline in the news, do you then read the entire article? Thirty years ago, your answer would have been “usually yes.” Today, it’s invariably going to be “hardly ever.” Why the difference?

You can probably guess my answer from the headline here: we are inundated (occasionally overwhelmed) by information and “news.” This has two related consequences. First, there’s so much “happening,” that to be “up on it all” we have to ingest lots of news, info etc. Second, the phenomenon called FOMO: Fear Of Missing Out. No matter how much time and energy we spend as news readers/listeners/viewers, there’s always a good chance that we’ve missed something important that still another news vendor is offering.

Several online newspapers (forgive the anachronistic word “paper” here) have taken to offering “AI synopses” of important news articles so that the reader doesn’t have to spend “too much” time on each. Other vendors note the article’s word count: an indirect “warning” of its length; some even note how many minutes it will take to read it! (The Times of Israel doesn’t offer synopses, but the headlines tend to be more informative, as are the longer sub-headlines.)

Not that the article length “problem” is a relatively new one. Go........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)