On the Download

I hope it works and I hope it saves newspapers ... and I hope the newspapers can read the tea leaves ...

http://blogdredd.blogspot.com/2009/05/breaking-which-free-is-bad-free.html

Music publishers are dead - and so are book and magazine publishers. Kindle is a pathetic example of non-convergence that has at best only a limited window of opportunity at a tiny niche market. Apple will come out of this as the preeminent player in new media.

Apple will be coming out with a touch screen tablet size device this summer.

Kindle is doomed.

If this gadget were less than $100, I might consider it worthwhile. But priced where it is, I think it is doomed.

Interesting article. While the move to electronic media may entail lower advertising revenues compared to print, I would have to believe that as print versions of newspapers are slowly phased out, that the operating costs for newspapers might lessen as well. A challenge for newspapers is whether national brands like the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, USA Today, etc. will simply run local newspapers off the road, or if local news will still have a strong pull for readers. We may see the day of a more hybrid where national and international news is sourced from the large news outlets and wire services (much as they are now), and local news is fed by smaller newspaper organizations, perhaps fed to a larger news source.

Another challenge might be that the CNNs and MSNBCs of this world might try to supplant the traditional newspaper, given that they are well established on the Web. It's tricky ground ahead. But given that Apple has perfected micropayments with its iTunes store, and that the next version of the iPhone will support subscriptions, it's likely that we'll see this model adopted by other sources as well.

I'll cross my fingers for the newspapers. We may see the traditional dead tree edition die an unhappy death (and save forests in the trade), but newspaper editorial staffs remain an important source of daily (and now, hourly) information. The loser in all this will likely be the pressroom staffs. As we have seen in Boston with the Globe recently, unions are fighting to stay alive. But technology is disruptive, and it's hard to strike against the Internet.

Someday, we'll have to explain to our kids that we once read paper newspapers. It might be like trying to explain 8-track tape players, and why we suffered through them for way too long. I have a hunch that the day will come faster than we can imagine.

i was one of the early adopters for the original Kindle. Nice device for 100K flyers, or some vertical/ business applications, but i find it a poor substitute for a bound book myself.

As for "saving newspapers", since the main problem for newspapers is the drop in advertising revenue (Every dollar lost in print seems to transmogrify to a solitary dime online) what does the Kindle have to do with changing papers' business models or bringing in more advertising? If I recall correctly, the Kindle so far accounts for single-digit shares of circulation for the WSJ and Fortune.

Long term, electronic distribution will obsolete newsprint, but I doubt those devices will resemble the Kindle. One opinion.

Being a kate night bedtime reader, and not wanting to wake my wife, it would be very smart for the Kindle to have a backlt screen for reading in the dark or dim light -- not just ofr bed readers, but for any bad lgith situation and perhaps outdoors. Seems like not a difficult thing to do in this day of LED and wafer thin TV's.

Writor444@man.com

I currently spend $120 per year for 365 days of newspaper delivery. I have no desire to stockpile all those daily editions for future reference. So the kindle's features and cost/benefit ratio does not work for me in regards to the kindle or any other device. Plus the paper newspaper won't break when I drop it or need power or require a wi-fi or cell phone connection. As technology goes, I think the kindle is very nice but it's too expensive for my volume of book or magazine reading. If a kindle could be had for less than $100 then I might buy one and then the cost/benefit ratio may prove to be in kindle's favor. Certainly, a kindle would be great replacement for paper based books for a student or manuals for technicians to use when they repair something. People who read dozens of books each year seem to really like their kindle so there's no doubt there is value, but it all depends on how much and what you read.