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The Newspaper Isn't Dead Yet
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."
Why not just wait until you get to the office and then browse the world's newspapers with google news?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Lining my parrot's cage with Kindles would get expensive.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
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.
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...)
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
I'm just a little curious what makes a new article more important than another. When I pick up a newspaper, its rarely the front page article that interests me.
I see the glass as full with a FoS of 2.
"The Kindle presents news as a list, leaving a reader to guess which pieces are most important to read." Leaving the read to guess or leaving the reader to decide which article is more important? Part of the reason newspapers are in trouble is because they tell they reader what they think is important. Anyway, it's still a list of articles by section. Just put the "important" ones at the top, so us morons will know what's important.
Sorry about the mess.
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!
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.
They call us sheeple, I wonder why?
Newspapers are filled to the brim with letters to the editor complaining that a certain "important" story was buried in the back pages by incompetent/evil editors. To some extent, these letters are correct: Often, important stories (in my view) are buried whereas the latest escapades of Paris Hilton make it to the front page. However, I do not have time to go through the entire paper, and I appreciate having a professional make a sort of triage estimate as to which stories are more important. Sure, mistakes are made, but I find that, in general, the important stories do appear on the front page, and it makes my reading experience that much better.
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.
As I have pointed out here and elsewhere, 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.
Classical Liberalism: All your base are belong to you.
This is going to turn into another one of those discussions where people who read Slashdot and other tech sites forget that they are amongst a minority of computer users and subsequently the consensus that is reached here won't reflect reality at all.
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.
Classical Liberalism: All your base are belong to you.
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.
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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.
Now go take another look at your local paper. Maybe there's something there you should be interested in.
Wo... Wor... Work? What is this "work" of which you speak?
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.
There, fixed that for ya.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Making copies of the song is very cheap; all the cost is in the production. Problem with newspapers is that they can't copyright the news. We "discovered" this "idea of what happened yesterday" first, so therefore, if you want to learn about it, you must buy our newspaper. Capitalism :(. One possible life saver for most of the newspapers is the local news, ie the new sheriff in town. But as people start living in the internet more, they may even stop caring about who the new sheriff is.
L.A. times subscription- $156 a year. Big-Size Kindle - $500. Think I'll stick with the dead trees for now. By the time the Kindle has paid for itself, there will be a dozen newer, better, cheaper models.
http://twitter.com/OLDTELEGRAM
Your paper has Paris Hilton on the front page? Dude, the National Enquirer is not a newspaper.
Also given Obama's recent speech in Saudi Arabia.
I think you mean Egypt.
"There is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter," Jeeves, (Jeeves and the Impending Doom)
Good thing I'm not a newspaper reporter...
So just because the kindle does a shitty job of delivering news, everyone assumes newspapers still have life in them? Who cares. Most people already get their news online, with or without the kindle. The newspaper business will stick around, for sure, but the age of big newspaper profits are slowly dying. Just a matter of time.
This seems to be working:
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/jacek_utko_asks_can_design_save_the_newspaper.html
-- thinkyhead software and media
There's a lot of newspapers with very little news of an value in them. My city has 2 major papers, and you can compare one to the other. The second one linked to often has Paris Hilton and the likes on the front cover. Their top news story for the day is something to do with monster trucks.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
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.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
"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.