above the fold/below the fold

[George Thompson]

VS:  it seems that TLS is a bit off on the interpretation. Although Soviet papers were generally all in
the same format and came folded, culturally, there really was no distinction
of above and below the fold--this is something that makes sense to an
American or perhaps to a Brit, but it would make no sense to a Russian.

Interesting.  The words are those of the reviewer, Ethan Pollock, who is identified as the author of Stalin and the Soviet Science Wars., 2006.  He's working on a project on the Russian bath house.  Evidently he can read Russian, and I would suppose has read Stalin-era Russian newspapers for his own research.  Maybe he is using the term in a figurative sense, meaning "not prominently displayed".
The book is The Red Rockets' Glare: Spaceflight and the Soviet Imagination, by Asif A. Siddiqi.

Through the first third of the 19th C, and beyond, NYC newspapers didn't give stories eye-catching headlines, and they weren't sold at newsstands -- primarily sold by home delivery.  During the middle third of the century, street sales by newsboys were important to some of the papers.  I don't know when newsstands became a significant source of sales.  I suppose the newsboys held the paper folded, but it must have been hard to read the headline while they waved it about.. Part of their job was to screech out the headlines and summaries of the most sensational articles.  So I would be surprised if editors gave thought to the placement of stories above or below the fold before pretty late in the 19th C.
18th and very early 19th C newspapers were tabloid size or smaller, but once the presses became steam-powered, the papers were printed on pages as big as the present day Times, and bigger.  The tabloid didn't come back until the early 20th C -- was the Daily News the first?  -- started in 1920.

I think I recall a discussion here of "the jump" as applied to on-line publications; I didn't recall that "above the fold" was also discussed.

GAT

George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.  Working on a new edition, though.

----- Original Message -----
From: victor steinbok <aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM>
Date: Thursday, April 21, 2011 11:31 pm
Subject: Re: above the fold/below the fold
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU

> Note that there is now a blog version of "below the fold" that has been
> discussed here fairly recently. Generally, it's a synonym of "after the
> jump" for blogs, which refers to the part of the blog post that is
> seen only
> on the individual page of that post and not on the blog front page.
> Alternately, there is a script with a button you have to click to see
> the
> remainder of the post. In any case, the distinction is between the visible
> and the invisible (until you do something). And there is really no parallel
> "above the fold", since that part is always there.
>
> Also note that tabloids don't have a fold! That said, it seems that
> TLS is a
> bit off on the interpretation. Although Soviet papers were generally
> all in
> the same format and came folded, culturally, there really was no distinction
> of above and below the fold--this is something that makes sense to an
> American or perhaps to a Brit, but it would make no sense to a
> Russian. I
> don't recall any jumps in Soviet papers before Perestroika (but that could
> be just faulty memory). The entire stories were placed on a single
> page and
> the main papers had 6 or 8 pages--minor papers had 4. No advertising
> of any
> kind. Some weekly newspapers were thicker, especially the humor/satire
> ones.
> But they were all meant to be presented as tabloids. A common sight
> would be
> people gathering around the full newspaper splayed on a public display
> stand, page by page, so you were meant to read the entire page all at
> once.
> In fact, for some time, public reading was more common than private (why
> waste the money on predictable pulp). This was certainly the case in 1957.
> You can't make straw out of cultural hay.
>
> VS-)
>
> On Thu, Apr 21, 2011 at 10:58 PM, George Thompson
> <george.thompson at nyu.edu>wrote:
>
> >
> > TLS, April 15, 2011, p. 13, col. 1, writing of the news of the
> launching of
> > Sputnik:
> > Pravda's announcement of the launch was relatively mild, below the fold,
> > and emphasized basic technical facts.
> >
> > "Below the fold" and its antonym, "above the fold", are not in OED.
> They
> > are very familiar to me, though I can't recall when I learned them.
> They
> > refer to a news story thought by the newspaper's editor to be worthy
> of the
> > first page, and additionally, interesting enough to lie on the page
> with the
> > headline "above the fold", so that it will be seen by people looking
> over
> > the papers displayed on a news-stand (or, otherwise, placed below
> the fold,
> > where it won't be seen unles the browser picks the paper up).
> >
> > A quick search of a number of the Proquest Historical Newspapers doesn't
> > turn up anything before 1941, from an English source, which doesn't
> bother
> > to define it.  Indeed, I would have guessed that it was a good deal
> earlier
> > -- early 20th C or late 19th.
> >
> > GAT
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
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