Ironically, the same day that I, a BYU graduate, wished I was on campus to grab a Daily Universe to read over lunch, I heard that the newspaper will soon move to an online-only format.
Let it be known — I honestly feel that the standard online news format is far inferior to the printed format. Today over lunch I preferred to download the PDF version and read that on my iPad rather than going to The Daily Universe website. I have often wished that websites such as the Deseret News would be presented more like a real newspaper.
The primary reason the online format is inferior to the printed format is that so little information is presented to the reader on a page. Ninety percent of the material is titles and single-sentence summaries. On a printed newspaper, each page contains the title and at least five or six paragraphs per news item — allowing for much more information to be communicated while the reader casually scans the news.
It is understandable that the cost of printing The Daily Universe is not sustainable. With the printed Daily Universe gone, I fear that its readership will be severely reduced. Perhaps, however, good can come from this — I encourage The Daily Universe to step beyond the dismal online news format and innovate something that can at least partially restore the value of a printed newspaper through the medium of the Internet. But until then, please at least keep the PDF version available.
STEVEN SCHMIDT
Provo
