The NYT has an article up about how the print medium needs an “iPod moment.”

The newspaper business is in a horrible state. It’s not that papers don’t make money. They make plenty. But not many people, or at least not many on Wall Street, see a future in them. In an attempt to leave the forest of dead trees and reach the high plains of digital media, every paper in the country is struggling mightily to digitize its content with Web sites, blogs, video and podcasts.

And they are half right. Putting print on the grid is a necessity, because the grid is where America lives. But what the newspaper industry really needs is an iPod moment.

The article stands by itself, I think, but it reminded me of my post earlier about whether there was more to do with text. I mentioned the adoption of podcasts then but didn’t really emphasize one of the points this article mentions, that most mediums are more multitasking friendly. In other words, you can’t read a newspaper while typing up a letter or writing code. Audio, though, works really well. Video works well when you don’t have to watch (essentially audio). But text… too much mental focus. I’d argue that’s it’s a first order attention activity, while listening to a podcast or a video soundtrack is a second order attention activity.

So perhaps my real question is how do you make text a second order activity (screen readers?) or perhaps make it more valuable as a first order activity…