{"id":12330,"date":"2007-12-14T09:02:19","date_gmt":"2007-12-14T14:02:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/?p=12330"},"modified":"2014-01-08T17:57:07","modified_gmt":"2014-01-08T22:57:07","slug":"where-did-all-the-readers-go-oh-there-they-are","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/2007\/12\/14\/where-did-all-the-readers-go-oh-there-they-are\/","title":{"rendered":"Where did all the readers go? Oh, there they are!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A research request from a colleague sent me scurrying back to  <i>The Patchin Review<\/i>, a magazine edited and published by Charles Platt from 1981 through 1983.  While skimming through my yellowing copies, I ran across the following item, which had nothing at all  to do with my search, in issue number  five, dated October-December 1982:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i>ED FERMAN of <\/i>F&#038;SF<i> says his latest poll shows a drastic drop in teen readers since 1970&#151;seems they&#8217;re playing videogames instead of reading books.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And that&#8217;s a report from a quarter of a century ago, when the state-of-the-art home videogames were <i>Space Invaders<\/i> and <i>Donkey Kong<\/i>!  <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/Dkong_end.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/Dkong_end.png\" alt=\"Dkong_end\" width=\"224\" height=\"256\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-12331\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;d hate to think what a contemporary poll might reveal.  If teen readers could  be stolen away from fiction magazines by the gaming graphics of the early &#8217;80s, so primitive in retrospect,  what  chance do they have of retaining them in the face of such current gaming juggernauts as <i>Halo 3<\/i> and <i>Mass Effect<\/i>?<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s a battle that&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/tobias-buckell.livejournal.com\/2007\/12\/05\/\" target=\"_blank\">being debated elsewhere<\/a>, but this nugget is a reminder of just how long the war has been raging.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A research request from a colleague sent me scurrying back to The Patchin Review, a magazine edited and published by Charles Platt from 1981 through 1983. While skimming through my yellowing copies, I ran across the following item, which had nothing at all to do with my search, in issue number five, dated October-December 1982: [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[376,378,377],"class_list":["post-12330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-charles-platt","tag-ed-ferman","tag-the-patchin-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12330","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12330"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12330\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12332,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12330\/revisions\/12332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}