For this mini-research assignment, we should like you to choose a print magazine, journal or newspaper which is also published electronically on the web. Read both versions as thoroughly as you can for two or three days. Compare and contrast your experiences in reading each version. 

We'd like you to think about:- 

• how you read each version (physically and intellectually) 
• what kind of information you look for/acquire in each version 
• the relationship between how you read and the kind of information you look for/acquire/retain?

• investigate the differences/similarities between print and electronic publication of the 'same' content
• investigate how new media, like online publications, change consumers' relationships to older media
• discover the relationship between a medium and the kind of information it distributes
• analyze the relationship between a medium and its consumers
• discover, by analyzing your own experience, what social, cultural and political implications digital publication might have

• First, think about the physicality of reading. Where do you read each edition of your journal or magazine? What are the sensations that surround you? How comfortable are you? How long do you read at a time?

• Next think about how you read. Do you follow the same pattern for each version of the magazine or newspaper or does each medium create a different pattern? Describe your patterns. For example, Lesley Smith begins her reading of the daily print New York Times with the front page. In the electronic version, she skims the front page, and reads first in detail the areas of most interest to her - the Arts and Technology sections. Her reading is more directed in the electronic version but less open to the unexpected, which might be valuable.

• Now analyze the patterns of reading you identify, using evidence to support your conclusions. Is your reading more broadly-based and general in one medium than the other? Does one medium allow you greater investigation in depth than the other? Do you finish the articles you begin, or do you move on when you're bored?

   2000 heralds another presidential election: does the electronic or the print version offers you most as a voter, or do they satisfy different needs? Do you pay more attention to ads. (and other ephemerals) in one version or the other? Do ads. influence you more in one version or the other? 

What are the respective advantages and disadvantages of each medium for you as a reader? For the magazine or newspaper itself? How do circumstances (you're in a hurry, you want to relax, you're researching a news event or a candidate) influence your choice of medium?