Skimming, scanning and reading

Two recent articles in The Washington Post might interest you. Both by Michael S. Rosenwald, the first “On Paper reading skills look worse.”  Not good news for literature classes, I fear, but you might take a look.

Here’s the link:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/serious-reading-takes-a-hit-from-online-scanning-and-skimming-researchers-say/2014/04/06/088028d2-b5d2-11e3-b899-20667de76985_story.html

That article went viral and spurred a big conversation on Twitter, Facebook and elsewhere, so the author, Michael S. Rosenwald followed up with a further investigation, posing the question “Did all those readers actually read the story?”
What he discovered with the help of Chartbeat which tracks how people read digital content, was that 25% of the readers didn’t even scroll past the headline, a smaller percent dropped off somewhere in the middle, and about 31 percent made it all the way through.
I guess we could say, “Read and weep.”  Interesting to know what other people think.  Anyhow the first article has some interesting research findings….