Slashdot Mirror
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:[.]
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.
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!
Do you actually understand that almost all of a newspapers revenue is derived from advertising, not from paper sales? And apparently a lot of companies haven't got the memo that newspapers are dead because they still pay exorbitant prices for advertising spots on the front pages of small hick-town newspapers. And apparently a lot of people that subscribe to newspapers haven't got the memo because they still subscribe to it.
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.
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.
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.
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.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Now go take another look at your local paper. Maybe there's something there you should be interested in.