User needs do change depending on the situation. For example, away from home with no internet connectivity, a pdf is a lot more valuable than a beautifully designed webpage. There’s a balance to be had between trying to be all things to all people and in just going for the lowest common denominator. Although the companies that do the latter really well seem to dominate their markets.

But if you are looking for something to occupy your mind while you take the bus to work, a portable device that enables you to carry a lot of music with you easily is probably all you need. The sound quality is not problematic because the listening conditions are not ideal for high quality sound anyway.

In terms of scholarly publishing, there may be similar splits though they are likely not to be about different readers but the same reader at different points in time.

There are times when all you want to know is what research is being done in a particular field an what the main findings are. Skimming abstracts is going to get you that information and help you feel moderately up to date. One of the reasons publishers e-mailing tables of contents is such a fabulous idea. At least you have been able to see what is coming out even if you haven’T had time to read it (though I bet folks then download the PDF for the ones they want to read so they can read them later).

But sometimes you really want to delve into the detail. You want to read the best material. You want to know how the study was done. You are planning to engage with that work in your own work. You need to know more.

As for reading online versus printing out, the two require different layouts. Certainly on a regular computer, there is way to much scrolling involved if you use a portrait layout and a font size suitable for printing. To read it, you need to increase the size and then the whole page doesn’t fit on the screen and you spend all kinds of time scrolling. Landscape and bigger font would allow you to easily read on a computer screen but then you have to sit in your office chair or run down the laptop battery to read on the couch. Don’t even think about reading in the bath!

The point is that “quality” is not fixed. It is contingent on the criteria that are important to a particular consumer. And it has long been known that there are “mass” consumers who will opt for low quality at low price, and smaller markets who will pay extra to get higher quality and better service.

Knowing the audience is key.

One challenge I think publishers face is to get real experts and make them facile with modern tools. As long as tools that create major audiences alienate expert users, or are viewed as “lower quality” even though they are quite the opposite, there’s going to be a gap. If publishers can close that gap, it’s better for everyone.

And one can always ask Jeff Goldblum about how that works….

And while there are high quality blogs available, I do think there’s a drop-off in information delivered when one goes from a professional writer who has directly interviewed a news subject to a blogger who is summarizing the article written by that writer to a 140 character tweet summarizing that blog entry. Though often, that tweet is “good enough” for most people’s needs.

Blogging is just a communication technology. I actually think good blogs don’t insult readers’ intelligence like mainstream media does, there are many good blogs, and there is a tonic in the information environment. What is polluting the mainstream media space aren’t journalists, but executives who are misplaced and consolidations that have gone too far, in my opinion.