I Want an Apple for Christmas

I Want an Apple for Christmas

Over the last few weeks I have been following the development of apple’s holiday plans and how the New York Times presents these developments in both the print version and the online version. My interest was sparked when I noticed that after being released for a short period of time, apple decided to drop the price of there hot new item, the I-phone. Intrigued I decided to follow the story and see how the content played out in the different New York Times media, print and online.
With the primary article publish on September 6th, the layout remained similar in both the online in print editions. The major difference I found between the two articles was the placement of photographs and the fact that of courser anything not on the front page of the print edition will be in black and white which in my opinion is less stimulating to the eyes. Another thing I noticed is that for the print edition its placement on the page hurts it. Although it is front page center for the Business Day section underneath it there is a huge photo of an E-book that just automatically grabs your eye. And when you turn to the second half of the article on c9 it’s on the bottom half of the page. In the online version, the photographs are in color and grab your attention. Also one thing that I really enjoy is that in the article itself you have links to items mentioned in the article for example Starbucks.
On September 7th, I was delighted to find an article that dealt with consumers reactions to the I-phone price cut. As I though many were not thrilled especially those who purchased the I-phone for its original price. Again as far as content of the article is concerned we find the same content in both the print and online versions. There only seems to be one difference in the articles and that’s the placement of the accompanying photograph. In the print edition the save the photo for the second page of the article but the online version has the accompanying photo at the beginning grabbing the readers eye.
Moving to September 10th I also found the content to be exactly the same in the print and online editions. I happened to truly enjoy this article as the writer David Carr beautifully talks about what makes an I-pod a God send gadget and that without the content that we want to buy for example episodes of our favorite Television episode well than its like he says, “If the gated community loses a lot of cultural real estate, will I need to keep my address there?”
On September 13th we find that the trend continues that the content of the article does not change. Again differing in the placement of photographs and almost nothing else, I become fed up with these minute differences. It seems to me more than anything else online versus print comes down to a matter of preference.
Again repeating my previous point I wonder how much of a difference there truly is between the print version and online version in the content of articles. I have a hard time believing that a writer would make two separate articles one for print, one for online or be willing to see his work cut down in either media.