TASTING, SMELLING, FEELING THE NEWS

Tomorrow's Newspaper Could Be Sensory Experience


Imagine a newspaper that allows you not only to read, say, a food story -- but literally smell the steaming soup, hear the steak sizzling, taste the ripe Camembert, and feel the thick bread crust.

Six design students from the Institute for Journalistic Education in Hagen, Germany, imagined just that -- and won best in show in the annual Tomorrow's Newspaper Design Contest, co-sponsored by the University of Missouri Harte Chair in Journalism and the Society for News Design Foundation. The students dreamed up the "Neuro-Transceiver," a newspaper aligned with a newsroom that transmits stories and accompanying "sensory channels" to a palm-size "BrainBone" appliance.

It would beam radio waves to the areas of the brain that trigger perceptions of taste, smell, touch, vision, and hearing. To protect users, the students said, stories about violent or disturbing events would be transmitted without the sensory channels. (Let's hope they also block stories that feature visits to a pro locker room after a hot game.)

One judge, Des Moines (Iowa) Register Graphics Editor Charles Apple, told E&P that the German students made the Neuro-Transceiver idea seem all-too-plausible: "We were absolutely terrified. All we could think was, 'God, I hope they can't make it.'"



Mark Fitzgerald (mfitzgerald@editorandpublisher.com) is editor at large for E&P.



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