BANGKOK – In a move that is being hailed “ahead of its time” by media experts, Nation Group has announced the launch of the world’s first “idiot-proof” newspaper.
Promoting the free broadsheet XPRESS at a press conference, Nation executives said that “now even a young child with no English language skills will be able to grasp the news of the day.”
Featuring large pictures, massive headlines, short stories with no context and pop-out card-style features that display news in the form of colorful three-dimensional scenes, XPRESS “will help promote a new generation of Thais who will completely reject the written word.”
“We want readers to finish the paper in around 20 minutes,” said XPRESS editor Tulsathit Taptim. “Readers can spend only a few seconds glancing at the headlines and photos to get the story idea. If they still do not understand, they can call a hotline on their mobile phone to have the story read to them.”
XPRESS will provide almost zero actual content over 45 pages through innovative design elements, such as the use of one word per page over a series of pages.
“With our large fonts, ‘The’ ‘Prime’ ‘Minister’ ‘Resigns’ could take up four pages alone,” explained Tulsathit.
XPRESS has taken the newspaper industry to its inevitable conclusion, say media experts. “For years analysts have declared serious newspapers dead,” said pundit James Jameson. “XPRESS will be the obituary everyone has been waiting for.”
For the editors and executives of Nation Group, however, a content-less newspaper represents the pinnacle of their careers: “For three decades we have been building up to this,” they said.
