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."
google news (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:But Cory said.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What a concept (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't see a problem here... (Score:3, Interesting)
There is no problem at all. (Either in the specific issue of newspapers, or in the general free market theory you mention).
I see it as the natural evolution of services. A limited news disseminating tool is replaced by another much less limited one.
All business models will eventually be replaced with a better model.
Re:But Cory said.... (Score:5, Interesting)
It's very simple: what will sell the most copies? Boosting circulation means being able to charge a higher rate for classifieds and advertising.
For tabloid papers, maximising circulation is explicitly considered by the editorial staff. They keep an eye on what subjects sell papers and promote similar stories to the front page.
Disclaimer: I worked for a small Newscorp paper in the classifieds department.
Google news has drawbacks (Score:3, Interesting)
And most irritating of all, sometimes the source being linked to wants you to register / login and possibly pay for subscription. I'm not against subscribing in order to pay for the effort, but I'm not going to pay subscription to every news site that Google News links to.
And besides, a local newspaper provides you local-interest stories that can be important to know, in addition to the same kind of news that Google News collects.
Sociological, not technical. (Score:4, Interesting)
At a certain distance Slashdot shares many important characteristics of a newspaper. There is the equivalent of an editorial board that prioritizes, categorizes and rejects various stories. There is a shared experience with other readers, and there is feedback.
Certainly /. is more feedback centred than a traditional newspaper, but if you browse at +5, not so much.
I look at google news to see what is going on; but I read the globe-and-mail and Toronto Star because I am interested in their perspective.
Re:The real problem is marginal cost (Score:4, Interesting)
The first part of this quote is the clue to why the second part isn't necessarily correct. The internet does "local" really, really badly -- currently, at least.
Searching for a local service in Google, in English, will most probably give you either a large international dot.com result, or dozens and dozens of link farm sites. It's pretty hard to find the right answer. This is less true if you search in a more localized language, because the link-farmers haven't bothered gaming Google as much with that yet. But in English, you're pretty much going to have to search for a while to find anything meaningful local. Google and others have a very long way to go with improving search.
Local newspapers are useful. There's dozens of scandals and stories happening in every reasonable sized town. No-one, upon no-one is really digging into those stories. Someone should.
People will buy newspapers that actually inform them about what is going on locally. It doesn't have to be up-to-the-second relevant. A big expose of a local political scandal can wait a day or two if no-one else is carrying the story, and no-one is. People will not buy local papers that have international stories or celebutard crap in them -- they can find that anywhere and everywhere on the net. People will buy local papers that have genuine local investigative news in them. Local papers are a good place to advertise local services -- because the internet serves them badly too.
Put local news and local advertisers together and you have absolutely no competition for that model right now. People keep thinking too big. This is one case where small is strong.
Re:The real problem is marginal cost (Score:5, Interesting)
The biggest earner is classifieds,
Classifieds are free now. They're called "Craig's list". Classified ad revenue used to drive newspaper revenue, but for newspapers that's now in the dumpster.
followed by advertising.
Local advertising doesn't pay when people read free online news from some paper a thousand miles away.
And yes, local content is king for newspapers:
For the most part, not enough interest there to sell a daily newspaper. A weekly paper, yes. But you're right, that's a niche that they could try to sell. It'll be a hard sale, though-- when you go to google news, what fraction of your time do you spend looking up local news?
Google News is not going to carry the local gossip.
Actually, Google news does carry local news and gossip.
Let's see... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I find the paper much more cost-effective (Score:3, Interesting)
Meh, at least there's the chance the parrot could read you the news. No such luck with the Kindle now.
Jacek Utko - can design save newspapers? (Score:3, Interesting)
This seems to be working:
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/jacek_utko_asks_can_design_save_the_newspaper.html [ted.com]
Re:Newspapers on the Kindle (Score:2, Interesting)
I've owned a Kindle 2 for three weeks. I subscribe to the NY Times on it. Having it automatically delivered to the Kindle every morning is great! I don't even need to get out of bed. I spend about an hour each morning reading the articles. I don't use the table of contents; I prefer to read linearly from front to back. Doing so has certainly led me to read many more articles than I normally would have using something like Google News. It's this kind of "serendipitous reading" that makes reading a magazine or newspaper so much more enjoyable than cherry-picking articles on a website. If the article is accompanied by a compelling picture, I'm even more likely to read it.
The news industry is gravely worried that ability for websites and our browsers to filter and deliver exactly the kind of information we are specifically interested in will negatively impact our society in the long run. Sure, I can focus your reading to just the articles I like, but that's the problem: I'd rarely read alternative viewpoints or stumble across previously-unknown subjects. It's been a real pleasure.
Re:But Cory said.... (Score:3, Interesting)
The Sun is typically considered a "recreational" paper. It appeals to the lowest common denominator, and shies away from serious political issues. It's a light-minded read for the diner or crapper, when you want to read about some ginger kid's extracurricular achievement or the local bullshitter's take on the latest faux-classy meat market.
The Citizen takes itself far more seriously as a news outlet, aimed at an intellectually-present (but average) crowd. It's the print form of the 6 o'clock news, for the most part.
My big beef with any publication is the painfully obvious bias they all push forth. I used to get a kick out of reading two "free" dailies, "Metro" and "24". The former is rather liberal, while the latter is conservative. Comparing their coverage and verbiage of the same event was often more informative than the actual printed words, simply by filling in the gaps each side chooses to ignore, and sometimes extrapolating the real bits both sides hint at but don't dare spell out. Despite the meta-entertainment value, I am quick to invalidate any publication that so blatantly tries to pass opinion as news.
I'm a sharply opinionated person, but I certainly don't claim to have "the truth". My blog is just that, a blog where I rant on and on about things that piss me off, like a geekier version of Bill Maher. You woulnd't try to pass Bill Maher's rants as fact, would you ? That's my problem with newspapers. They can't stick to the facts, though instead of launching inflammatory tirades at specific people or groups by prefacing them with "I think/feel/believe", they strategically omit important facts to skew the viewer toward a certain side of the matter. That's the biggest problem with news disseminators: they're on someone's payroll, and that someone wants value for their money, so they push an agenda. Whether it's "political donations", advertising, outright municipal blackmail (if you print X we revoke your permit)... every newspaper has a puppetmaster.