Newspapers as information and entertainment

Newspapers have always been part information channel and
part entertainment venue. The recent front-pages from the New York Daily News and the New
York Post, poking fun at Trump, are a great (albeit somewhat extreme)
example of newspapers as entertainment.

Along these lines, the Nieman Lab’s report this week about
the Boston Globe’s new election app
caught our eye. It’s a fun and engaging way for their audience to be informed
and entertained at the same time. Due to the automatic refresh every fifteen
seconds, many people were transfixed by the near constant stream of Iowa Caucus
results, especially given the close race between Hillary Clinton and Bernie
Sanders. Apparently it was a very successful effort, according to the Social
Media Director the ‘’Globe’s tweets linking to the app pulled in about 10 times
the traffic the Globe normally gets to article pages via Twitter.’’

Newspaper publishers may be recognizing, in this era of
devices, the balance of information and entertainment may need to lean more toward
entertaining content.