Can the New Digital Readers Save the Newspapers? 289
Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times reports that several companies plan to introduce digital newspaper readers by the end of the year with screens roughly the size of a standard sheet of paper to present much of the editorial and advertising content of traditional periodicals in generally the same format as they appear in print. Publishers hope the new readers may be a way to get consumers to pay for those periodicals — something they have been reluctant to do on the Web — while allowing publishers to save millions on the cost of printing and distributing their publications, at precisely a time when their businesses are under historic levels of pressure from the loss of readers and advertising. 'We are looking at this with a great deal of interest,' said John Ridding, the chief executive of the 121-year-old British newspaper The Financial Times. 'The severe double whammy of the recession and the structural shift to the Internet has created an urgency that has rightly focused attention on these devices.' The new tablets will start with some serious shortcomings: the screens, which are currently in the Kindle and Sony Reader, display no color or video and update images at a slower rate than traditional computer screens. But many think the E-ink readers are simply too little, too late and have not appeared in time to save the troubled realm of print media. 'If these devices had been ready for the general consumer market five years ago, we probably could have taken advantage of them quickly,' said Roger Fidler, the program director for digital publishing at the University of Missouri, Columbia. 'Now the earliest we might see large-scale consumer adoption is next year, and unlike the iPod it's going to be a slower process migrating people from print to the device.'"
Standardization (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes. Because nothing will boost readership like each newspaper requiring it's own custom $300 reader that doesn't work for any of the other newspapers or books.
Just make it work on the popular readers out there (at this point that's the Kindle and the Sony devices). Amazon is rumored to release a new Kindle with a bigger screen on Wednesday (they've got a press conference announced).
I _want_ a larger reader (Score:5, Interesting)
I would say the reason smaller devices have been accepted in the marketplace is because there are almost no larger devices.
As a grad student who's just finished a master's degree, and is about to start down the long path to a PhD, I know I'm going to have to read a zillion PDFs - journal articles, scanned chapters of books, working papers from repositories, etc. I really want an ebook/digital reader, but I'm reluctant.
The only large-screen device I can find is the iRex DR-1000. It's got a 1024x1280 10" display, so much larger than the standard 600x800 of most readers. That would be great for PDFs. There's also a version with a stylus that allows for direct annotation on the screen. Fantastic.
Downside? It's about $900, has been reported to have battery life problems, and people give very mixed reviews to the firmware. Aside from the iRex, there's nothing else in this category (or if there is, please let me know!).
If someone made a larger, hi-res competitor to the DR-1000, and it cost maybe $500-$700, you might see more interest in larger readers. But right now, iRex has no competition.
Of course not. Here's why: (Score:5, Interesting)
Newspapers used to add value. Once upon a time, people who worked for newspapers actually wrote articles. In fact, papers had writers on staff who could be counted on to keep delivering articles that someone might want to read. Now, all the articles come from wire services. So while you might think the situation is bad because one company owns all the papers in your hometown, the situation is actually completely and totally fucked because every significant article in your paper comes from one of a small handful of news agencies.
It is true that major, important articles still come from newspapers, even corporate ones like the New York Times, or the Los Angeles Times. We will all be the less when newspapers are gone, and we have less news sources. But on a day to day basis, the average consumer could do without them. They can get the news from the wire sources directly, and at the point where they are using a computer to read the news, their news-reading device can do content aggregation and filtering for them. I wouldn't recommend it to any average person, but for the technically literate it is possible today to fairly trivially create your own Slashdot-like news site with automatically aggregated content, comments and/or forums, spam filtering, OpenID et cetera using LAMP with Drupal... using only published modules. And if you just bought a tablet, you could run it on the device. The only things missing from this plan are the e-Ink display and the ease of use (including the pretty interface... but you could probably do that in the browser too, with some jQuery effects.)
There are probably even easier recipes for doing the same thing. The simplest (from the actual implementation standpoint) is to just use the RSS functionality in Firefox or similar. But firefox isn't exactly optimized for use on that kind of display... My current goal is getting Angstrom Linux working on my WebDT 366. I got it to build but then the kernel was apparently built for i686 somehow, even though I specified Geode LX. So far OpenEmbedded is kicking my ass :(
Re:Standardization (Score:3, Interesting)
No because nothing will boost readership like a device that tries to charge customers for content to compete with the free internet and its millions of web pages, blogs and users.
It's a small handful of people who would actually want to carry around another $300 widget that is only used to read books and newspapers and offers far less functionality than a $300 netbook class computer.
It's not even a done deal that netbook class makes any sense. You can actually read reasonably well on an ipod touch (and by extension any smartphone with a screen at least as good as the iphone/touch), and it fits in a purse or pocket.
It doesn't make sense for every city to have a company who's job is to distribute national news to the local citizens. Aside from local content, we can already all connect directly to the wire services for free without the newspaper middleman.
Consolidation and modernization (Score:4, Interesting)
Does anyone else think it odd that the white house press room is filled with reporters? 3 or 4 reporters could do the same job as the 20 or 30 that pack that news room. I also find it funny that most of the major newspapers carry substantially the same stories. It's all very redundant, because it's designed to be distributed locally in an age when that delivery process took an entire day, and delivering over longer distances was not feasible for a daily paper.
The major newspapers will mostly die or consolidate. Technology has made redundant having a major newspaper with all its attendant printing machinery, reporters, staff, etc. in every major city. Certainly there will be a market for a few major newspapers, but not the sheer number we have today.
I don't think it's the end of the world scenario that people are painting it to be, either. We'll still have multiple sources of info (I suspect the NY Times and Wall Street journal for instance will survive, along with a multitude of local news outlets and other media outlets like cable news networks and bloggers), there just won't be the increadible multiplicity we have today.
Amazon - Standard - WTF (Score:4, Interesting)
Amazons Reader won't even read all of Amazons own formats. Remember Amazon bought Mobipocket yet Kindle won't read Mobipocket DRM protected files.
And then you expect them to read other companies formats? You must be kidding.
Martin
ebook + wireless = subscription (Score:3, Interesting)
Newspapers should offer wireless enabled ebooks with 1 or 2 year subscriptions.
The newspaper will save on print and distribution costs.
People will still be able to read the news with breakfast.
It's the iPhone, Palm Pre, and Blackberry stupid. (Score:4, Interesting)
I got a Kindle and an iPod Touch for Christmas from my wife. I loved the kindle but it is just a little big to carry around. When Amazon came out with the Kindle reader for the the iPhone/iPod Touch I tried it out. Guess what it is wonderful. I always have my iPod Touch in my pocket. I use it it to read a lot more than I do my Kindle. At home I may use my Kindle but the Touch is just too handy.
It is the next gen of smart phones that you need to put news papers on. AT&T no has the Nokia E71x smart phone for only $99. Even "feature" phones are getting pretty dang smart these days. Soon everybody will have a Palm WebOS, iPhone, Blackberry, Android, S60, or for those poor souls Windows Mobile device. The question still will be how will they make money? Will people be willing to pay or will ads work?
I will go back to our home town newspaper... (Score:4, Interesting)
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch. We always had a subscription and I used to read it in the morning before going to school. Well, skimmed major articles, and looked at the comics and sports pages mostly, but the daily newspaper was fairly thick and had a decent metro section.
Well, year after year it kept getting thinner and thinner with more generic articles purchased from Ruters or the AP. In the past 5 years my Dad and I can think of a single major multi-part story they did on the corruption going on in local fire protection districts. It was a damn interesting read and something people needed to know about (like how many wives were on fire boards voting for pay increases, etc..) But that was one investigation in 5 years. Meanwhile the business section was cut down to the top local stocks and that was the death nail. Why pay $0.35 a day for the same wire stories you had already read online and he can go to the website and get the local sports stories.
If they brought back more local investigations and reported more about what was going on around town, you know have content that was interesting and worth reading, he'd get a subscription.
I think news magazines are in the same boat. Time, Newsweek, etc. all seem to be thinner than I remember once upon a time. It's gotten to the point where the only ones I read on a regular basis are The Economist and Der Speigel when I can find a copy.
Re:A kick in the groin with that subscription? (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm willing to pay for content OR to have it infested with ads. Not both.
They want to have my cake and eat it too. This is why I can't wait for these businesses to crash and burn.
We are talking about the traditional newspaper approach. Ads pay the bills, subscribers just defray some costs. Although people around here seem to think print media is dead, I think it's more accurate to say that huge print conglomerates are dying. Small town local newspapers are still making money. Heck, even some of the large city papers like the Houston Chronicle would be profitable if they weren't hitched to the millstone called Hearst Newspapers. Consolidation is a bad idea in these markets. Simply printing wire stories isn't enough anymore. The focus has to be local...and it still works. And it will continue to work, if people are still willing to try it.
Re:Standardization (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Thinking about things the wrong way (Score:5, Interesting)
In reality, their biggest mistake was not containing costs 10 years ago (slowly) to reflect the structural shift of information to a different medium
No, their biggest mistake was not focusing on what their ink on paper product can do that new mediums like the internet can not do. Cars do not have "car-type buggy whips". The whip manufacturers have moved on to entirely new fields of endeavor mostly not involving transportation. Ink on paper newspapers have to do the same.
They have lost the "textual news/agitprop" business by being obsolete. OK fine. Now what can you do with ink on paper that a computer cannot do.
The average inet user supposedly has a 14 inch monitor running 800x600 or whatever. On the other hand a newspaper can print out freaking huge graphics if they want. Take advantage of that.
1) Show the news in graphical form on a map. I'd like a map of all "major" road construction projects each day. Oh, and gimme a big ole map with all police/fire/ambulance activity marked and maybe a short comment. And I'd like maps for activities going on over the next couple days, you know, like festival here, museum thing here, etc. Maybe mix and match so you get a couple pages of maps, one for each day yesterday, today, and one for each day going a couple days in the future.
2) Do some news in big ole timelines. Not a simplistic lame graph, but something big and cool.
3) Giant pages of tabular data. Gimme a TV-guide grid style listing of all local movie theaters and what they're showing at each time. Take advantage of those huge pages!
4) Whatever you do, don't screw up the giant comics pages and giant TV schedule grids. Err, thats exactly what they're doing, so cut it out.
5) A page needs to be devoted to kids coloring projects, etc.
6) Stop distributing text products and go graphical. Any website can provide a textual astrology report. But only a newspaper can provide a daily giant 1 foot on a side astrological reading thingy. Yes I know astrology is for fools, but the point remains that some data needs to go graphical. Years ago, last time I read a paper, I recall seeing a regular column of bridge tournament puzzle things that was done entirely in text... Geeze guys go graphical.
7) Focus on stuff that can't be done online very conveniently, like crosswords, wordsearchs, etc. Anything that involves scribbling on the paper (as opposed to scribbling on the monitor)
8) get some "only in physical paper" features. Don't care what it is, pictures of attractive people, dilbert cartoons, oragami patterns, paper airplane patterns, silly picture frames, funny flowcharts, or whatever, but you gotta orient it around encouraging the readers to cut it out of the paper, then stick it on the cube wall or do something with the cutout. Can't do that online (well, yeah you can print out, but this thing is already printed out...) You may need better paper and printing than cruddy old newsprint.
Another thing they could do is find bloggy info and push the limits of fair use by quoting them. The only useful information is on blogs now... the problem is its buried under junk. Find the good stuff and highlight it in the paper.
Finally, if there is one special industrial connection that newspapers have, its the book publishing industry. So, in each daily paper, publish 5 minutes worth of reading of some hot new novel. Your options are subscribe to the paper to read the whole thing 5 minutes at a time, or cough up the bucks at Amazon to read it all today. I think this will burn up alot of paper space, but if it brings in the readers... Do fiction and nonfiction. I'd think an appropriate nonfiction would be Galbraith's 1929 Great Depression, or for a paper with real guts, how about "the creature from jekyll island"
Instead of doing something special or unique with their media, they are trying to do the same old thing but cheaper... that isn't going to work in the long run.
Re:I _want_ a larger reader (Score:3, Interesting)
I agree. There's definitely a part of me that would like to see a reader that could render a full-sized 8.5"x11" page (or European equivalent). That might not be the easiest to carry around or even the most efficient reading size, but it'd be nice to be able to print a document to a normal PDF formatted for normal printing, throw it on my e-book reader, and go.
But ok, maybe that's too big by several measures. Still, I have a larger point: the display sizes for these things shouldn't be based on conforming to screen sizes, but instead based on standard print sizes. 1024x1280? 600x800? I don't really care. Give me a screen that's the size of a normal paperback book page, and have the whole device be not-very-much-bigger.
Re:I _want_ a larger reader (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm in the exact same boat, and I would like to quit killing trees to read articles...but the LCD hurts my eyes!
Heck, I might be willing to pay 900 bucks for the DR-1000 if it had decent reviews, but as you mentioned they are very mixed.
I know lots and lots of academics who would pay the same.
Re:I _want_ a larger reader (Score:3, Interesting)
The 600x800 screen costs $60 (http://www.electronista.com/articles/09/04/22/kindle.2.cost.breakdown/)
Amazon, Sony, iRex all get their screens from the SAME manufacturer, E Ink.
$100 eBook devices are probably in our future, but only after E Ink (or some competitor) gets their economies of scale in place and can significantly lower manufacturing costs.
Re:Answer: (Score:5, Interesting)
I mean, yes, for a living, I stare at a computer all day. I read on it all day, BUT, I often take things that are important, that I want to remember and quickly refer to and print them off. I wouldn't be interested in a kindle, I like to read real books, ones that I can dogear and whatever. I find that when I have things I"ve printed off, I often doodle on the pages and mark or highlight things. I find that like when I was taking notes in school, I can picture in my head the exact page with doodles and all on what I'm trying to look up or remember.
I can't seem to do the same thing with a computer screen.
That and for a newspaper, and granted these days I only get the Sunday paper, but, I like it for the coupons I can clip. I like to take out the store ads for BB and other places, take them with me when I go shopping.
And frankly, how the hell are you supposed to start the charcoal in the 'chimney' starter without newspaper? Not to mention, I'd not like to spread out a bunch of e-newspapers on a table during crawfish season to eat off of....
Re:ebook + wireless = subscription (Score:3, Interesting)
Kindle newspapers have monthly subscriptions, with wireless delivery. The lack of ads is wonderful.
Re:Answer: (Score:3, Interesting)
Remember the pre-internet BBS days, like Compuserve, Prodigy, etc? Selling tiny little low res newspaper readers, would be like in the 90s when the pre-internet BBSes were going down, trying to boost subscriber numbers by selling a tiny low res fisher-price laptop that can only connect to Prodigy, while the rest of the market moves to the internet on their PC.
It kind of makes me laugh.
Re:Answer: (Score:5, Interesting)
I used to prefer dead-tree books until I got an iPod Touch last December. Since then my reading habits have been revolutionized. I've read almost 2 dozen books since then, and all but 3 were on my iPod. It is not the *same* as reading a paper book, but the benefits balance the cons quite nicely.
Re:A kick in the groin with that subscription? (Score:3, Interesting)
Honestly, Media companies hate the consumer.
No, they don't hate the consumer, they think the consumer is stupid and needs to be led by the hand(and frequently lied to) to see what is in his best interest. Of course that is a large part of why they are failing, the consumer says, "We want X, Y and Z. We don't want A, B, or C." The media companies respond, "No, no you really do want A, B, and C. And why would anybody be interested in X, Y and Z. Here, buy A, B and C from us." Then, they yell loudly as fewer and fewer buy their product.
Economy and freelancers (Score:2, Interesting)
With people losing jobs left and right, maybe you wouldn't need as many permanent reporters if you offered to pay a cheap but reasonable sum for freelancer submissions. I mean heck, look how many people want to biog just because it is fun for them, something to do. Sweeten the pot a little with some cash, who knows... Identify what you want by subject and give some guidelines in advance, etc. I guess you'd have to wade through a lot of crap at first to see who did quality work or not and was reliable so you could count on them, but perhaps that might be a way to cut costs but still have good content. And like you said, that would be a way to reduce office space requirements as well if they just emailed the copy to you. I know every local community has folks who go to just about every local sporting event, other people are court junkies, just go there to watch, other folks love going to the county commission meetings, etc.
Just perhaps. I was just thinking about it, going back to the onions on belts days, how many of us wrote and gave it away free to the "alternative" press back then, just because we were passionate about the subject (usually politics and stuff, that's what I did, but I remember a lot of the artsy fartsy crowd did it as well, covering the local scene, the concerts and local theater and movie reviews and so on).
Re:I will go back to our home town newspaper... (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, you got something backwards there and Helen Thomas touched on this in her book. People will read interesting stories of local interest, but that takes a news room and reporters to do, and that is expensive. As newspapers looked to cut costs, they slashed the news room. Well, less local stories and investigative journalism meant less interest and more people stopped reading. So what did the news papers do? They continued to cut the local reporting and news room staff, and guess what, they continued to loose readership. It becomes a vicious cycle where the newspapers are slowing killing themselves with paper cuts. (Bad pun, I know)
I rarely agree with the woman on anything, but that was her insights after 40+ years in the business. And I think she nailed it.
Meet the new "electronic typewriter" (Score:3, Interesting)
Mass media corporations and agencies that can adapt to the changes that we are and will be experiencing, will continue to be in business.
More than likely none of them will exist in any form we recognise today. E-reader devices--even relatively successful ones like the Kindle--are stopgap measures that only serve to prolong an obsolete business model in the face of new technology. They are this generation's version of the electronic typewriter.
Personal computers became practical options for a large-enough market to achieve critical mass in the 1970s, yet typewriter companies soldiered on for near around two decades trying to prop up their obsolete concept of a typewriter by adding the technology of computers without actually admitting defeat and MAKING computers. Thus, the introduction of electronic typewriters, and soon after dedicated word processors, in the face of a rapidly expanding personal computer market.
Such devices were to be the savior of the industry. Word processing was the first "killer app" and these devices fit the bill nicely and were easier to use than general purpose computers. Though computers could be bought at comparable prices, you had to add an expensive letter-quality printer to get the same kind of hard copy. There was no concern about interoperability or open standards because the competing computers lacked much of that as well, and there was no publicly-accessible internet either.
Problem is, the typewriter companies didn't "get" computers, even while at the same time making microprocessor-based, single-purpose computers themselves. PC technology continued apace, and the PC industry consolidated around a small number of interoperable, standard platforms. Spreadsheets and databases became more important as "killer apps" and the internet made networking an essential.
Typewriter companies COULD have evolved their product offerings into open-architecture, general-purpose computers and not only survived, but thrived, but how many big typewriter manufacturers to YOU know of that actually DID that and DID survive? Very few come to my mind: IBM for one, and they only "got it" because they were already a computer company too with their mainframe offerings. Commodore got it as well--Tramiel was a visionary, perhaps too far ahead of his time, when he embraced the PET and pushed for low cost and friendliness with the VIC20 and C64.
However, even those who "got it" didn't fully "get it". Commodore didn't seem to figure out the value of interoperability even within their own product line! They couldn't come up with a proper successor to the C64 on their own and could only hang on by purchasing Amiga--which was again completely incompatible ans again acieved ALL its success because of its technical merits and despite the follies of its marketers. IBM saw massive success with their original 5150, 5160 and 5170 models (aka PC, XT and AT), and even saw fit to maintain compatibility. However like Commodore they lacked a proper successor after the 5170 and were stuck in the habit of proprietary offerings, thus the disastrous foray into the MCA bus architecture in an effort to lock-in customers like in the old mainframe days. As a result, Commodore went extinct completely and IBM doesn't make personal computers at all any more.
It'll be the same with media companies over the next 20 years. If the names survive they'll not be the same companies--News Corp. of 2030 will be no more related to News Corp. of today than Atari of today is related to the Atari of 1989. Same goes for television networks, movie studios, record companies and radio stations. True, they are often all divisions of the same big media conglomerate, but that's the point--they are DIVISIONS. They don't "get" that whether it be in newsprint, on TV, on the radio or in a web page, the content is ALL THE SAME--it all gets made into bits, stuffed into IP packets and pushed into wires or over the air at some point, or it easily can be.
The future means a s
Re:Standardization (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem with PDF is layout, in that the page wants to be a certain size and shape and if your reader isn't that size and shape you're screwed.
Further, forcing a layout also tends to ignore one of the ebook's major benefits: resizing and reflowing text and fonts for better readability. Thus with the current Kindle EVERY ebook has the potential to be a "large-print" version.
No. Cramming dozens of narrow columns onto an ebook reader in hopes of duplicating newsprint is NOT the way to go. They'd be much better off redefining the medium and think more like a magazine. Summaries, TOCs, browsing by topics, "smart" keyword searches so people can always find articles of interest, and more.
Reinvent the future, don't duplicate the past simply for the sake of doing so.