The first think that I do every morning is turn on my iPhone and look at Yahoo! News. Maybe I’m in the minority. I think that anyone who is willing to cart around a Kindle already has a smart phone or lap top that they cart around. Maybe that would change if fifty thousand people got free Kindles but I just don’t see it. It’s one of those great ideas in concept but not reality.
Our only paper has been reduced to what amounts to a pamphlet on most days. They’ve slashed and cut (even the weather forecast is only 3 days now) it to the bone and are probably still losing money. I give it another year or two.
All this talk of Kindle and the iPhone is nice, but you’re all still missing the point. Publishers aren’t interested in these devices, because they can’t make money off of them. You can make Facebook widgets and iPhone apps and get your paper on Kindle, but none of those things will bring in the ad revenue that just one print edition of the newspaper does.
Yes, it costs money to print and distribute a newspaper, but print ads bring in hundreds or thousands of dollars apiece. There is no revenue model for online advertising that comes anywhere close to what print is bringing in. Even when you eliminate the distribution and printing costs, you can’t translate the revenue from print advertising to the web.
Newspapers are not news delivery devices that happen to have advertising in them. They are advertising delivery devices that happen to have news in them.
But they probably are. Classified ads used to be a serious source of revenue, but Craig’s List has pretty well killed that (being much better at the job).
Most print media are now entering their death spiral. (McClatchy stock price has fallen from around 60 to around .60 in a couple of years.) It will take some time to fully shake out, but the long-term prospects are bleak.
I’m smart enough to do it - but I’m also practical. My smart phone has the data connection disabled - I synch up only at home over Bluetooth, for free.
The Kindle content just shows up on the screen after I purchase it or order it, generally. I don’t have to hit many buttons to do that. This system is almost ideal for the elderly, frankly, and the data plan is included in the original purchase and in the cost of the ebooks. I don’t have to pay extra.
The first thing I think when I grab my G1 is to check my calender to see what I need to do. Then I check a couple of my favorite online comics. We have different priorities.
Actually I lied the first thing I think when I grab my G1 in the morning is to hit the snooze button on the bastard alarm program and go back to sleep, in 10 minute increments, for as long as I can get away with.
The thing about online comics and yahoo news is your local newspaper doesn’t get a cut. Where as if you looked at Garfield on a device you were paying them money to use they’d get a cut. That’s the interest for them.
Now Kindles are new technology so of course anyone with a kindle is prolly a technophile. Just like digital cameras where only for technophiles. Now who doesn’t have a digicam?
Real solid books have advantages over ebooks, but what does a newsreader have against something as disposable as a newspaper? A whole lot.
Harder to bring the computer into the bathroom with you…
You are wrong. My post is my cite.
That’s anther argument for kindle like devices vs smart phones/PCs. With a device they have control of they can put out higher quality ads* (think motion, reactive, and targeted). They’d have the same distribution, and better reach without the costs of paper and ink. The only people who wouldn’t see the ADs would be the ones smart enough to hack their reader. Those people prolly wouldn’t respond to the ADs anyway
*by higher quality I clearly mean evil, but think from the paper’s ad revenue perspective here
My iPhone is way easier to bring to the can than a newspaper. Hypothetically, of course…
News papers are NOT Green, they are also creators of greenhouse gases. The disposal f newspapers is a big problem, and the preparation of wood pulp (for paper) pollutes rivers and sreams.
So, I guess that the death of the newspapers is a OOD thing; Al Gore would approve it!
Hello!
You can even get Sunday-only versions if you’re a brainiac.
As part of the new package they are now running the L.A. Times puzzles every day. I am not familiar with them.
Hmm… a real life puzzle snob.
As for the books, I’m sure there are levels of difficulty, possibly even more difficult than what you’re used do. If you would search them out, I’m confident you could find what you’re looking for.
Ah… I see what you did there.
Thank you. I wonder how many people remember that line. It obviously made an impression on me.
Then why did they sell their building and now rent it?
Unfortunately the new owners of the L.A. Times screwed over its staff in a despicable way.
I don’t know anything about this but is there a good way to fire people because their jobs are no longer necessary?
Well, that IS what a boot stamping forever WOULD do.
Tried that with my mom. She doesn’t want to have 100 Puzzles, Easy to Hard! in a book. She wants to do her puzzle a day, and then wait til the next day to double check her answers if she missed something. She’s not a puzzle addict…she just likes to do a puzzle a day.
I know my mom’s demographic is not what the advertisers are looking for. And I know that advertising income is what fuels the newspaper business. But papers have been with us for so long, since before advertising ran the world. They will be missed. Electronic news is only as good as the electrical systems that power them, and we’ve seen how easily we can be hoaxed, or misinformed. And I find that with a newspaper, I find myself reading and learning about things I would never even click on on the computer. I read so much less important stuff on the web than I get in one daily paper, just because I can get through the paper quicker than waiting for pages to load.
Plus we recycle every single newspaper we get. So we aren’t tossing them in landfills.