Here’s an interesting video that shows how the NY Times is trying to work with a range of e-reader devices (out and yet to come to market) to see how the “paper” renders on these devices and understand the range of user interactions with them.
This is all “cool” stuff. But one gets the sense that these devices will take several years to hit the mainstream — the Kindles are too expensive right now to do it — and that will be too late to make any meaningful difference to the current economics of the newspaper industry.
- Who will control the New York Times?
- Did Google Really Consider Buying a Piece of the NY Times?
- Eric Schmidt on Google’s New Plan for the News
- Lack of Vision To Blame for Newspaper Woes (Howard Kurtz asks the key question: Why did no establishment media company create a Craigslist, a Huffington Post, a Google News, a Twitter, or other sites that have altered the boundaries of news and information? In February, 2007 I wrote: What Can Techmeme Teach Newspapers? This was just one of many posts in which I argued in favor of newspapers becoming news aggregators)
On the phone yesterday with someone it occurred to me that print newspapers are now like the dinosaurs in the aftermath of the fabled asteroid hitting the earth — not such a novel comparison, but appropriate perhaps. They’re still alive but the environment that used to support them is radically altered. The recession combined with a thousand cuts inflicted by years of the Internet are going to bring all but the most resourceful to the brink of extinction.
May 13, 2009 at 4:59 pm |
Greg, check out what they’re working on in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Caution, it’s a long read.
http://stevebuttry.wordpress.com/2009/04/27/a-blueprint-for-the-complete-community-connection/
For a shorter review of their plan, see this:
http://recoveringjournalist.typepad.com/recovering_journalist/2009/04/inventing-the-future-in-iowa.html