The Newspaper Isn't Dead Yet 108
theodp writes "Slate's Farhad Manjoo had high hopes for using the Kindle DX — Amazon's new large-screen e-reader — to read newspapers. A good first effort, says Manjoo, who concludes that for now newsprint still beats the $489 Kindle. While he has issues with latency, what he really misses relates to graphic design. The Kindle presents news as a list, leaving a reader to guess which pieces are most important to read. Newspapers, by contrast, opine on the importance of the day's news using easy-to-understand design conventions — important stories appear on front pages, with the most important ones going higher on the page and getting more space and bigger headlines. Also, because of its overnight delivery model, Manjoo gripes that the Kindle suffers from a lack of timeliness, making it not even as good as a smartphone."
Re:google news (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Yes it is (Score:3, Insightful)
The newspaper is so dead, see? *points at the newspaper*
Like my 92 year old grandfather. Technically still alive, but everyone knows it's only a matter of time.
What a concept (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The real problem is marginal cost (Score:5, Insightful)
People who read websites like Slashdot will access information from the Internet, the majority of people still read newspapers.
I actually like the newspaper format better, it has a beginning and an end, I can it over breakfast. I'd have trouble even reading the new Slashdot summaries over breakfast, not to mention the articles.
Re:But Cory said.... (Score:5, Insightful)
That said, I'm not sure why Kindle can't organize the stories like Google News, if I am interested in a story, it pretty much always appears in the top headlines. If necessary, they can license the technology from google, I'm sure they would embrace the partnership.
It's not about the content, it's about the money. (Score:3, Insightful)
As I have pointed out here and elsewhere [clubtroppo.com.au], newspapers do not make their money from selling copies; they make it on classifieds and advertising.
All the stuff about bloggers being better than journalists, or journalists being better than bloggers, is a total sideshow. It's about money.
Reader bias (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Reader bias (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:What a concept (Score:4, Insightful)
Wrong. One of the reasons we pay for a newspaper is to have professional editors select and rank-order news for us. There is far, far too much "news" out there for us to be able to do this on our own. Newspapers choose what they think their readers will be interested in (and frequently, what they think their readers should be interested in) and present it accordingly. Yes, they do know more than you do about the news. It's how they make their living.
If you don't like the selections they've made on your behalf, choose another paper. If enough people dislike the selections, the newspaper will have to get another editor.
Re:But Cory said.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Now go take another look at your local paper. Maybe there's something there you should be interested in.
Co... comm... commute? Why not live close to work? (Score:2, Insightful)
In Portland, Oregon, we have the Ore-groan-ian, also known as the Bore-gonian, also known as the Whore-gonian for its ads that try to take advantage of people.
Newspapers do badly not just because they kill trees to communicate, but because they think only of advertising money. George W. Bush was wonderful until it became more profitable to discuss his destructiveness toward the country. Abusers eventually lose; in this case it has taken a long time.
Newspapers also do badly because, by the time you see the newspaper, you have already read the same story on Google News.
Another reason is that, while you are commuting, you can possibly find enough Wi-Fi to read Google News on your laptop.
Another reason is that the newspaper carries only enough of the story to fit between the ads. They ABSOLUTELY do not care about educating you about the story. They care ONLY about their ad revenue. Did I mention that?
All only my opinion, of course.
Re:But Cory said.... (Score:3, Insightful)
There, fixed that for ya.
Sounds like Music (Score:2, Insightful)
Newspapers have more to worry about than kindle (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:But Cory said.... (Score:3, Insightful)
The real problem is not marginal cost (Score:3, Insightful)
"With the internet, though, newspapers are no longer local, so all the newspapers compete on the internet with each other, and there is no real bottom to the cost."
I think you stated the solution as a negative fact. Newspapers can be local. In fact, they need to be local, because local is a value they can add to the equation. They can still gather and arrange facts better than anybody, and they can still get access and sell the product of that access. People will still pay for that.
What they can't do is all compete as national/international publications anymore. They could do that when there were only a few choices, first, the two or three local big papers, and later the one big local paper and the national papers flown or satellited in: NY Times, USA Today, etc. So Muncie or Syracuse could have a national/international publication with what they did supplemented by the news services.
The internet kills that by putting all those pseudo-national publications in the same market, and there's just not a market for that many national papers. And the Muncies and Syracuses can't compete with the NY Times and the Washington Post at the national and international level.
The market I think we need to look at is magazines. The old truism was that there was a market for three major publications on any subject: Road & Track, Car & Driver and Motor Trend. Usually there were two biggies and a third guy trailing and doing things differently. After the big three you went niche: magazines dedicated to Porsches, local or regional mags, British roadsters, muscle cars, etc. They all did fine, but they didn't challenge the big guys.
So if that's the model we're headed for, you'll get your big three -- NY Times, Washington Post and one other one, take your pick from a half dozen -- and a bunch of niche papers: Wall Street Journal, papers smart enough to be very local, maybe a Kansas City paper or a Mountain states paper for their regions, that kind of thing. I can envision a tier, actually: your local paper that will sit through the town hall meetings and catch the locals in graft and corruption; the state or regional paper that has resources the locals don't and knows its area better and will cover grain prices or water rights issues, and has access the NY Times doesn't and doesn't want to provide; and a national paper.
They just need to figure out a model quickly and kick the bean counters the hell out of the office suites. In gradual school I read a study about the second papers in major cities and how they died. In every case they weren't making enough money, so they cut staff and/or pages (or color, or paper quality, whatever) to protect the profit margin. The readers noticed they were getting less value and defected, which made advertisers go and/or rates drop, and so the papers made cuts to protect the profit margin. It was a death cycle that they didn't figure out and eventually the big paper in town bought them out. The exception that proved the rule was one paper run by the heir to the family tradition who said to hell with it and added reporters. The readers noticed and sales went up and that paper ended up devouring the one that had been bigger. But bean counters will never get it. It's what they did to GM (cut costs and therefore quality to increase margins and be amazed when nobody wants to buy your cars). You see it day after day in corporate America. Bean counters don't know what you do, they don't know quality when they see it, but they can count and they know everyone in business is supposed to bow to the great god of profit.
It's not that I'm against profit, but you've got to make money doing a good job at what you do. If the recurring financial bubble fiascoes teach us anything, it should be that bankers, accountants and these all-purpose managers aren't the answer to anything in particular, even banks.