Paper is wireless
Now the Toronto Star is following the Guardian’s lead and offering a downloadable and printable edition — the Star in the afternoon, the Guardian all day long. It still remains to be seen whether people really are printing their own papers — where’s your union card, buster? — before the train ride home. Ten points to the first person who catches a picture of a commuter reading one of these things.
Tags: newspapers
August 31st, 2006 at 6:14 am
Juan Giner Says:
August 31st, 2006 at 6:13 am
Jeff, you are right.
This doesn´t makes any sense.
Better invest this money and efforts in better reporting.
El PaÃs in Spain was the first. then Infobae in Buenos Aires, The Guardian after and now the Toronto Star.
They found advertisers for this ride to nowhere.
It shows how easy is to fool advertising people.
August 31st, 2006 at 6:45 am
Hasn’t the Telegraph in the UK been doing something similar for a while, with its e-Paper? Not sure how successful it’s been.
I can’t see myself printing out a pdf to read - apart from anything else it jsut adds to the spiralling use of crisp, bleached-white paper in today’s modern offices. But the idea of being able download a pdf of my favourite newspaper to a handheld and read it anywhere is quite attractive.
August 31st, 2006 at 7:57 am
I don’t see the point too. I spoke about it in my blog yesterday : http://mediacafe.blogspot.com/ (in French). I am looking around for figures to know if someone is really using this kind of service and to try to measure success. I don’t find anything. Any suggestion ?
August 31st, 2006 at 10:10 am
Many years ago I was having a conversation with a top executive at a large newspaper company who was very excited about the idea of shifting the printing of newspapers to the subscribers. Basically, he said, the company would just have to deliver a large amount of blank paper to the subscribers every so often. I couldn’t help but ask him: If a thrown Sunday newspaper can crush a screen door or kill a dog, can you imagine how much damage you could do tossing a large reel of newsprint onto somebody’s lawn?
In other words, it was a dumb idea even back then…
August 31st, 2006 at 2:06 pm
I teach maths and study skills to adults. G24 is potentially a superb source of lesson material for me so I hope it lasts a bit longer than the comments above would suggest.
Most of my students read the UK Metro [free sheet given away on public transport in parts of the UK] daily. G24 gives them a bit more. The Canadian thing will add an international dimension.
Now I’ll come clean: I don’t print G24 and read it; I browse on the screen.
August 31st, 2006 at 4:21 pm
[...] Well, one paper I grew up reading has its own ideas about that: The Toronto Star will next week launch an eight-page P.M. edition in PDF format (via Romenesko). I think it's a good way to give readers the option of reading breaking, original content in whichever form they choose — even if it appears The Star is not the first to offer a fully downloadable edition. Er, and Jarvis remains skeptical:"It still remains to be seen whether people really are printing their own papers — where’s your union card, buster? — before the train ride home. Ten points to the first person who catches a picture of a commuter reading one of these things." [...]
September 11th, 2006 at 1:35 pm
[...] All the news that’s fit for print By: Darren LerouxA few weeks ago the Toronto Star announced that it would begin offering a mid-afternoon, e-version of the paper proclaiming it would be “North America’s first downloadable afternoon newspaperâ€. Plenty of folks wrote about it, Jeff Jarvis among them, commenting, “Ten points to the first person who catches a picture of a commuter reading one of these things.â€It’s an interesting concept to be sure, offering an eight or twelve-page ‘Star P.M.†paper for commuters, but will it have legs? Personally, I think it will, at least in the GTA. The “paper†arrives in your inbox, or rather a link arrives, at two times each day (depending on the preferences you picked). The last version, arriving at 4:15pm, directs you to a link where you can download the eight or 12-page PDF of the paper that you can either print immediately or save to your computer. For those with more specific interests, they can download single sections, whether it’s sports, lifestyle etc. It’s a novel idea and the fact that those commuters who don’t have notebook or PDA can print off a copy on their way out of work is quite convenient. What makes it moreso is the fact that it’s in a PDF – so it prints very clean (unlike a traditional Web page). For those who have long commutes and are one of those 150,000 daily GO Train commuters, they can pull it up onscreen on their mobile device and read away. As my colleague Ian Barr said to some colleagues here, “It’s a savvy strategy that compliments its traditional paper, its current online offering and of course secures additional advertising revenue.â€Indeed it is. The paper can produce the electronic version at a minimal cost, the stories are already being written for the regular edition and there are no extra ‘print runs’ that need to be done. Add to this, the fact that they can track every download, and then approximate a pass-through for people that share it with others, and it’s quite a way to boost circulation and interest in the paper. Not to mention the fact it’s a new source of ad revenue for the Star, so the more downloads they get, the more they can charge advertisers and add even more gravy to their heaping plate. Published 11 September 2006 14:53 by Darren Leroux TrackBack URL for this post:http://blogs.hillandknowlton.com/blogs/trackback.aspx?PostID=4536 [...]
September 29th, 2006 at 8:47 pm
[...] Paper is wireless [...]