Fitted for coffin, flowers now ordered
Alan Rusbridger, editor of the Guardian (where, full disclosure, I write and consult), testifies before a Lord’s committee on the future of news and says that digital requires an “act of faith” and that he is not optimistic about the future of local newspapers, and he says it as eloquently as usual:
“For at least ten years we are going to have to have an act of faith and pump money into digital markets without significant return… and we will do it with the expectation that things will change,” he told the committee.He speculated that the newspaper industry could have an ‘Ipod moment’ where a devise is developed with the potential to consign printed newspapers to the history books.
Regardless of this, he added, the situation for local papers was more worrying than for national papers. . . .
“Because societies need news, web-based models will spring up, and are springing up in most countries including America, that are much more local and originate from citizens.
“They are really interesting things which may be more reflective of the communities than the local papers… I don’t think the printed local newspaper has an optimistic future.”
Tags: newsinnovation, newspapers
July 19th, 2007 at 6:45 pm
Flash…this just IN….
“He speculated that the newspaper industry could have an ‘Ipod moment’ where a devise is developed with the potential to consign printed newspapers to the history books.”
About two years ago, I got a free online subscription to PC MAGAZINE…which featured a special downloadable READER program. I installed the reader, downloaded my first ISSUE…and was ENTRANCED as I began FLIPPING VIRTUAL PAGES (complete with page curl!) The ‘ipod moment’ for newspapers has already COME and GONE, as far as this goes. The question now is will Apple develop an iPhone with a big enough screen to enable this kind of technology to be easily read on a palm-sized unit…
July 20th, 2007 at 8:07 am
He is right - flexible displays will happen soon: http://www.technologyreview.com/Nanotech/19024/
I’m a big fan of domain specific devices - and amortizing the price of those devices over years of ownership. I am having a virtual love affair with my Sony eBook http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?catalogId=10551&storeId=10151&langId=-1&partNumber=PRS500U2 and … courtesy of Google’s copyright capers thousands of books on flash now - literally.
So when I’m on the plane I can listen to my favorite music and read my favorie books. And since I’m a Mac user, and a nerd ( full disclosure I own now and have always owned nerds.com) it was NO problem to write AppleScript to go to my favorite news websites and download in pdf format the pages I like to look at in my travels.
Gemstar … the company which purchased the original eBook reader technology - is selling the firm - perhaps the patents will go along with and enable us all to finally have a portable reader … so that iPod moment can show up a little sooner.
BTW - the text on my iPhone works great … if only there was a TABLET size iPhone .. like Apple’s Knowledge Navigator from 1987 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WdS4TscWH8.
July 20th, 2007 at 11:52 am
For Robert Hoffer:
I’m with you, Robert…Macs RULE. lol… My home machine is an older PC, but my office machine is a G5 - and there IS .. NO .. COMPARISON…