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."
But Cory said.... (Score:1, Funny)
Re:But Cory said.... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Your paper has Paris Hilton on the front page? Dude, the National Enquirer is not a newspaper.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (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 th
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.
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.
Re:But Cory said.... (Score:4, Informative)
Also given Obama's recent speech in Saudi Arabia.
I think you mean Egypt.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Good thing I'm not a newspaper reporter...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
There, fixed that for ya.
Re:Gate Keepers eh? That reminds me: (Score:1)
Print is dead.
-Dr. Egon Spengler 1984
Re: (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.
Re: (Score:2)
More like radio, everybody claimed (M-)TV killed it, but somehow it is still around, even 30 years after it supposedly died.
Don't hold your breath on newspapers, they will still be big in 50years, might be 10% or 20% of what they are now, but that is still a lot. They will whine from now on and until then, and people will proclaim them dead nonstop, but they wont die.
google news (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:google news (Score:5, Funny)
Well, yes... some people do. Not anyone who reads /. though! So the original point was pretty valid for this audience!
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
Re:Co... comm... commute? Why not live close to wo (Score:2)
L.A. = Expensive place to live and job isn't stable so not worth moving closer until things are stable. :P
Re: (Score:1)
Another reason is that, while you are commuting, you can possibly find enough Wi-Fi to read Google News on your laptop.
So i am going to have my laptop on my passenger seat while I drive 45 minutes to work?
That reason might work if you have some sort of public transportation and are not the one driving, but its not as easy as reading the paper while you get stuff together in the morning or some such.
Personally I use my media center in the morning and put Google News up on my TV to at least know the headlines to see if I want to check them fully later.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not sure if you realize this, but some people actually have a sense of humour.
Re: (Score:1, Informative)
because the suits, the manager and the company proxy do not like it
i live in a part of the world where i get THREE FREE newspapers distributed at the subway/metro
and i enjoy reading slashdot on my new HTC Magic Android phone ^_^
Google news has drawbacks (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
I like Google News, but I would never use it as a primary news source; it's inherently sensationalist. Whatever lots of people are writing about is what makes it on the front page. You're just as likely to see Jon&Kate drama as you are to see Iran protests. That's the downside of using an algorithm instead of human editors.
What I do use it for is getting the whole picture on a particular event. Read articles on the same event from Fox, CNN, BBC, AP, Al-Jazeera, NYT, and Daily Kos, and you're likely to
Re: (Score:2)
And what about the vast majority of the world's population who don't work at a computer?
Re: (Score:1)
I find the paper much more cost-effective (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I find the paper much more cost-effective (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Meh, at least there's the chance the parrot could read you the news. No such luck with the Kindle now.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, since you brought it up... I must argue the newspaper isn't dead, it's just resting.
The real problem is marginal cost (Score:4, Informative)
In the old "print" days of newspapers, this was not a problem-- there would be only a few newspapers in a town; and the customers were given the choice of buying a newspaper or not reading the news. 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.
The only real solution is for newspapers to continue to go out of business. When this reaches the point where there are only a handful left, they might be able to start a model of restricting access to paid customers. They're still competing against bloggers and crowdsourcing, of course, but the actual professional (which is to say, paid) reporter model of newsgathering may have advantages in the quality of news, sufficient that it may be worth it for some customers to pay for.
(This is a general problem in free market theory, by the way, not specific to newspapers-- in a market with many small producers (rather than one or two large ones), when the marginal cost of production is close to zero, the equilibrium free market cost is zero, and thus everybody is driven out of business...)
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: (Score:1)
Cross-Threaded wrote:
I don't see a problem here...
Well, if the answer "newspapers die because their business models no longer work" is fine with you, then you're right, from your point of view, there isn't a "problem."
I was pointing out why their business models don't work. Whether or not that's a "problem" depends on whether or not you think that it matters.
Re: (Score:1)
The answer "newspapers die because their business models no longer work" is fine with me. This is an indicator of progress. Meaning that society has found a more effective way to communicate.
The only real solution is for newspapers to continue to go out of business. When this reaches the point where there are only a handful left, they might be able to start a model of restricting access to paid customers. They're still competing against bloggers and crowdsourcing, of course, but the actual professional (which is to say, paid) reporter model of newsgathering may have advantages in the quality of news, sufficient that it may be worth it for some customers to pay for.
I failed to praise you for the above quote. It is right on the money.
Re: (Score:2)
Better? Cheaper.
Re: (Score:1)
No, I mean BETTER. In other words, you can change your business dynamically as the environment you are doing business in changes.
Cheaper? It depends on what you mean by cheaper.
If your definition of cheaper is spending less while ignoring quality, your business will eventually fail.
If your definition of cheaper is spending less while still making your business work, then yes. Absolutely.
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: (Score:2)
The biggest earner is classifieds, followed by advertising. And yes, local content is king for newspapers: Google News is not going to carry the local gossip.
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.
Re: (Score:2)
As it happens, I agreed with you before we met [clubtroppo.com.au].
Re: (Score:2)
Addendum: I hate to seem like I'm spamming that link, but it pretty much covers all I have to say on this subject.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Hmm, I've never even used Google news. I don't carry my computer to lunch with me to read news while eating. I don't carry my computer into the restroom with me either. (...) If my newspaper goes away, nothing will replace it, certainly not the web or some silly gadget.
So don't replace it with something silly. I love my wm6.1 smartphone, i had a wm6 before it. My dataplan includes a news package with breaking/top news from the major newspapers in the city and the device is just great to use it. I do read it on the commute (and some times in the same situations you mention) and because it's my mobile it's always with me, always has the latest news, and its much more convenient to handle. I personally hate wrestling with the wide format papers and doing origami just to go t
Re: (Score:2)
It's a fad of some slashdot readers to declare the death of anything that can be done in a different more technical way. As soon as 5 people purchased Kindles, one of those people declared that anything that came before the Kindle was dead (not just obsolete or on the road to obsolescence). Now that there are a total of 10 people who've purchased a Kindle some have noticed it isn't the perfect replacement.
Re: (Score:2)
Nobody's saying Kindle will be the replacement. In fact, most people are saying it won't be. You're confusing that with saying that newspapers are dead, which is a sentiment for the most part strongly denied only by newspapers.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Most newspapers lose money on the cover price. The real money is in classifieds and advertising.
What is killing newspapers is not competitive sources of content, it is competitive ways to place classifieds and display advertising [clubtroppo.com.au].
Disclaimer: I used to work for a small Newscorp newspaper in the classifieds department.
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: (Score:2)
The internet does "local" really, really badly -- currently, at least.
I disagree. The internet, by nature, reaches an international audience, but local communities can still connect to eachother online. Take a look at craigslist.
Here in New Jersey, we have nj.com [nj.com] which does local news well (though the site itself is unorganized). A lot of the newspapers contribute stories to the site. If newspapers put more energy into sites like these, they might survive. They would not make near the amount of money they used to make, but they'd stay in buisness. Use the craigslist model,
Sounds like Music (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
That's pretty much what got Bush two terms, wasn't it?
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
At The San Francisco Chronicle, for example, print and delivery amount to 65 percent of the paper's fixed expenses, Bronfin said.
Electronic newspaper reader has look of the real thing [nytimes.com] (New York Times)
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
Plea to consider the consequences (Score:2)
What a concept (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re:What a concept (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
I don't browse the sections so I'm not sure, but don't only certain stories get chosen for the front page?
Re: (Score:1)
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: (Score:2)
If enough people dislike the selections, they will simply migrate to the internet
Fixed that for you.
Newspapers on the Kindle (Score:5, Informative)
Some information for informed discussion:
I rather like my newspaper on the Kindle, just for the fact of the small size and not having to crawl under the car to retrieve the paper. In addition, articles are in one piece, not continued on page A28. The articles are not abridged. The rest comes down to the individual paper and their publishing habits, and how much effort they're putting into the Kindle edition.
I get the Washington Post on my Kindle. It never has more than one picture per article, and sometimes when there are multiple pictures in the print edition, the wrong caption is attached to the picture in the Kindle edition. There are no ads, classified, comics, crosswords, sudokus, or horoscopes. All of the local sections and once-a-week sections are included. It is delivered every morning while I stand on the metro platform. The download takes about 30 seconds. Make sure to get it on the platform- Sprint doesn't have towers in the tunnels in DC.
There are separate sections for "The Front Page" "Politics & Nation" "World" and "The Fed Page," which I believe (not sure) are all rolled into the A section in the print edition.
You can clip a whole article with two clicks, which copies the whole article into a text file that can later be moved to a computer.
Periodicals are automatically deleted when they are more than seven issues old. You can flag any particular issue to be saved, and it will not delete it, although once seven issues have passed (a week for newspapers, seven months for magazines), you will no longer be able to re-download that issue from Amazon, although if you have stored it on your computer, you can always re-load it by USB. This is a demand on the newspapers part, as they make good money selling back articles. It's also largely moot, as most people throw away their newspaper when they're done reading it anyways.
The Kindle newspapers are no less timely than print newspapers, as they ARE the print paper in content. For breaking news, there's the NYTimes Breaking News Blog, which I don't subscribe to, and Google News open on my browser during the day at work.
The Washington Post has made huge leaps over the past year and a half on their Kindle edition. Every couple months I notice something in the layout has changed, and always for the better. When they made that big deal about the Business section being rolled into the A section, it has remained separate for Kindle users- the change was made to save on printing costs, after all.
I read my news on the Kindle 2. The Kindle 1 has a different set of behaviors (never automatically deleted old newspapers, leading to memory filling up, no joystick for easy navigation). The DX is just a Kindle 2 with a larger screen and (reportedly poor) native PDF support, so newspapers should not be any different than on the K2.
It's REALLY EASY to go get a single issue of a different paper, if you want one that day. Today I want to read the LA Times and see what's happening in my parent's area? It's kinda hard to find newsstands selling the LA times in DC, but I can do it easily on the Kindle.
No periodical that I know of has TTS disabled, although it's a terrible idea. The TTS software is terrible with proper names.
The main issue with newspapers on the Kindle stems from- what else?- DRM. A normal book purchase for a Kindle is available on all devices associated with that account (up to 6). A periodical subscription is tied to one device only. That means if you have His and Her Kindles, then you'll need two subscriptions for both devices to get the same paper. Also, this means that if you are backing up back issues on your computer and your Kindle breaks and is replaced, you will lose access to those back issues, unless you break the DRM. Switching which Kindle a periodical is assigned to is easy, but if you change your settings twice a day every day, you are likely to attract attention. Periodicals can only be assigned to Kindles, not to iPhones/iPod touches, although iPhones have their own methods of newspaper-getting.
Anyone have any questions about the actual implementation of Kindle newspapers? Nothing like actual facts to base a discussion off of!
Re: (Score:2)
Some information for informed discussion: ...
Geez. The first time I've read anything informative on the subject. Between the promotions by Amazon and the trolls proclaiming that newspapers are dead, it's a refreshing change to see your post.
That said, I'm curious. The articles in the Washington Post (or any other newspaper you've seen on the Kindle), are they formatted in single or multi-columns? And the "front page" (if there is one), is it laid out similar to the respective web edition, or does the Ki
Re: (Score:2)
They are all single column. The Kindle 2 screen is too narrow for two columns, in my opinion.
They are SUPPOSE to be providing multi-column, more traditional newspaper layouts for the DX, but they have not yet. I do know that the Kindle 1 and Kindle 2 actually receive different versions of the newspaper to handle their different navigation schemes; the same newspaper downloaded on a Kindle 1 will have Next Article-Previous Article links at the beginning and end of every article. The K2 does not, as a left
Re: (Score:2)
Thanks for the extra info. I think I will be buying a Kindle. That's not to say, of course, that I expect it to be a perfect solution for me, or for the newspaper industry.
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: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
There are no ads, classified, comics, crosswords, sudokus, or horoscopes.
Seriously? I would think leaving those out would be a huge mistake, except for maybe crosswords and sudokus, those would be hard - but maybe worth it in the end.
No wonder they don't like these new distribution models, they're not pushing their advertising to them! Just throw them up for free until you work out a new pricing model or whatever (shouldn't really change though). People love the classifieds and comics, and classifieds and ads are how the newspapers make money.
Re: (Score:2)
Seriously? I would think leaving those out would be a huge mistake, except for maybe crosswords and sudokus, those would be hard - but maybe worth it in the end.
I don't know why they do it, just that they do. I'm glad they do, since ads suck and Craigslist got me 3 of my last 4 jobs, where newspaper classifieds have failed me, but I don't know that it was a wise business decision.
Re: (Score:2)
That's another important point- Amazon's international support is nonexistent at best, and if all the computers you have access to are thumb-drive disabled (like anything belonging to the DoD), then you're SOL.
This is a major problem for one of Amazon's target demographics, the business traveller. If all of your travel is in the states, then great, but many people do end up doing lots of international travel.
Re: (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 o
The newspaper isn't dead... (Score:2, Funny)
... it just smells funny.
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.
Re: (Score:2)
All the stuff about bloggers being better than journalists, or journalists being better than bloggers, is a total sideshow. It's about money.
Not really, it's central to their problem. You would be absolutely correct to say that news stories are not the product for a newspaper. Neither is advertisement space though, not completely. The product is the eyes of readers on that ad space. The more eyes they have the more valuable the ad space, and the more they can charge for classifieds and advertisements.
If bloggers can produce a similar quality product to newsprint articles and can put more eyes on the ad-space or provide the same number of eye
Re: (Score:2)
Circulations are still healthy for most newspapers. Many small newspapers publish content only of interest to locals and they get those eyeballs because of it.
But eyeballs do you no good if a) Craigslist sucks the money out of classifieds and b) online advertising rates continue to plunge like a chunk of lead, making a shift to online news worthless.
There's more to it than that, but as I said: it's about money.
Reader bias (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1)
Neither
In any case, printed newspaper readership is declining at an amazing rate while he Internet grows and this is easily explained by a cause and affect relationship.
It's... (Score:1, Offtopic)
It's just pineing for the fjords!!
Let's see... (Score:4, Interesting)
10 -v- 20,000... (Score:2)
The absence of layout (Score:2)
He outlines the reasons papers are dying (Score:2)
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.
But who decides what is most important? The newspapers. The design is a reflection of what the people who run the newspaper deem most important.
A newspaper is only better if you agree with the choices the designer has made in leading you to read certain th
Newspapers have more to worry about than kindle (Score:3, Insightful)
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]
Newspapers: I'm Not Dead Yet! (Score:1, Redundant)
Internet: You'll be stone dead in a minute.
Duh! (Score:1)
Until Netcraft confirms it I won't believe it either.
Advantages of newspapers (Score:2)
There are many advantages to buying an actual, printed newspaper. There is nothing like an old newspaper to light a fire or for polishing windows, and of course, you can take it with you to the loo and read it or use it when the loo-paper has run out; I challenge anybody to do that with their netbook or iPhone.
Break-even in about a year (Score:2)
Debates over the "feel of paper" or "convenience of electronic delivery" aside, and assuming you could live with either, the economics are interesting. If you're committed to getting the paper, even the very expensive Kindle DX pays for itself in about a year (plus or minus). The difference, of course, is the paper delivery bleeds you a little week-by-week so you don't notice it. The Kindle DX is a big purchase outlay of nearly $500 to get started. But, again, after about a year things are close to break-ev
Sounds like an improvement to me. (Score:1)