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Throughout this last year I have been fixated on the technology, media and publishing news that never seems to rest. Major shifts in technology and their acceptance are happening so quickly that even as the writers in traditionally established publishing houses publish their articles, their scribing becomes nothing more than the thoughts of mere pundits. The following are some of those article titles taken from two months in early 2010.

Headlines of the ebook’s relentless digital march

January 08
The Gurdian | CES 2010: The ebook revolution

January 9
NYT | A Deluge of Devices for Reading and Surfing

January 10
NYT | Optimism Takes Charge at Consumer Electronics Show. From Print to Phone to Web. And a Sale?

January 11
Wattpad Release | Wattpad Closes Funding Round

January 13
All Things Digital | Sony’s E-Reader Opens New Chapter in Kindle Rivalry

January 25
The Millions | Confessions of a Book Pirate

January 26
Technology Review | Amazon Expands the Kindle with Apps

January 27
NPR | Will An Apple Tablet Heat Up E-Book War?
NPR | In An Era Of Immediacy, Why Fear The E-Book?

January 28
PCWorld | Apple’s iPad Ready to Challenge the Kindle
Neowin | Is the iPad Apple’s iFail?
The Economist | The book of Jobs
The Economist | Steve Jobs and the tablet of hope
Daring Fireball | Various and Assorted Thoughts and Observations Regarding the Just-Announced iPad
NYT| Despite Changes, Many Still Oppose Google Books Deal

January 29
Itbusiness | Apple iPad — 5 setbacks and two show stoppers
The Guardian | Palms, Kindles, Nooks, iPads – none are as cool as Gutenberg’s gadget
WSJ Blogs – DIGITS | E-Readers Fall Short for News, Study Says
The Journal | Measuring the iPad’s Potential for Education
Learning Solutions Magazine | Apple’s iPad: What does it offer for e-Learning?

January 30
TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home | Apple’s iPad DRM uncertainties make the Financial Times: ePub gummed up

Jan 31
Mediaweek | The iPad: Great Type Hope? Optimists see iPad’s promise, but where’s the video?

Feb02
NYT | Rosensweig Lands at Textbook Renter Chegg.com

Feb 03
Mashable | Amazon Buys Touchscreen Company for Its Kindle Division
PC World | Five Reasons Why the iPad Won’t Change Higher Education

Feb 04
All Things Digital | PBS’s “Frontline” Considers the “Digital Nation”–A Lot of Handwringing Over the Inevitable, but Watch It Anyway

Feb 05
Wired | Panacea or Poison Pill: Who Gets to Decide About $10 E-Books?

February 07
Guardian | As I start to write my latest book, I fear for the future of publishing. Retailing pressure and the emergence of the ebook are threatening the future of authors and their work
The Sunday Times | British Library to offer free ebook downloads Jane Austen: Originals cost £250

February 8
NYT | Kindle Books in Snack Sizes
NYT | Publishers Win a Bout in E-Book Price Fight

February 10
Inside Higher Ed | E-Library Economics
NYT | E-Book Price Increase May Stir Readers’ Passions
NYT | Do School Libraries Need Books?

February 12
NYT | Do E-Readers Cause Eye Strain?

February 15
The Guardian | Why I’m an ebook convert
L.A. Times | Apple to wrap digital books in FairPlay copy protection [Clarified]

February 16
The Australian | Don’t resist e-books, Carr warns

February 21
NYT | Textbooks That Professors Can Rewrite Digitally

February 22
The Phoenix | Holy Scrollers! The future of e-publishing can be found in one of the world’s oldest books.

Feb 24
Inside Higher Ed | A Win For Publishers

Feb 28
NYT | Math of Publishing Meets the E-Book

March 01
The Independent | Here’s to the small print: The past and future of compact literature

March 02
Gigaom.com | Books Now Outnumber Games on the iPhone

March 4
The Globe and Mail | A lament for the bookshelf
Publishers Weekly | Barnes & Noble to Test Bundling e-Books, p-Books

For the love of news on paper

We started the conversation via an old-fashioned session of show and tell. Gary laid out some vintage newspapers for me as well as some other, more contemporary ones from around the world. I then proceeded to take a quick tour through time and technology as I went from very early British newspapers that were imperfect yet perfectly personal to today’s modern computer generated crisp and exacting layouts. Of course what I was missing were the papers from the future but I guess I will have to wait for those.

‘Hot off the press’ will be forever known as ‘hot off the wire’. Newspapers must evolve to meet the demands of a new generation.

During the conversation I found myself defending the newspaper industry on several issues while also chastising it for their lack of vision. The positive issues focused on content and value from journalistic integrity and professionalism, the negative issues focused around their business models and their confusion as to what to do now and next.

The traditional positives

• Newspapers don’t generally hire hacks; they hire people who have a love of and have been trained with a journalistic focus. These people understand their greater role in public information dissemination and actively try to write articles that increase their personal value with in-depth, interesting, and compelling stories.
• There is a community of editors and other talent such as photographers, other writers, information graphicists, librarians, etc., which creates a wealth of support for each article written.
• There is a comprehensive understanding of one’s subject matter that is built up with years of practice. Multiply this by a hundred or so professionals each with a different speciality and the newspaper becomes a wonderful and lively knowledge base. The employees are able to bounce ideas off each other and then contibute their articles to produce a newspaper that delivers news ranging from world politics to local ‘feel good’ stories.
• Newspapers arguably have the best format for displaying mass amounts of complex information or great amounts of content on a particular subject matter that can easily be read.
• There are, of course, more positives about the paper medium itself but I want to talk a little now about the negatives.

The old and new negatives

• Newspapers no longer deliver the most timely news, that is now the realm of the internet. But this is a big problem, by the time your local newspaper is ‘hot off the press’ the information it carries has already been delivered.
• As the internet has grown so have community interest groups which are regularly supported by large numbers of people which allow them to network which in turn leads them to feel personally important. Even if a story is not written well or authoritative, some people relish the idea of being able to speak their mind or shout their opinions even more.
• Similarly people are not necessarily interested in the range of editorial that a large newspaper is able to give them. Many people prefer targeting multiple internet information sites to get the news in a timely manner that they are interested in.
• It may just be a matter of habit or the intrinsic warmth that one gets from a paper product, but unlike the new generation who are much more comfortable with online content, the older generation (I span both of these) sees or rather doesn’t see online content as readable. This ongoing event is not going to get better. Younger people have phones, PDAs and computers to read on and they are already used to it.

The present combination of traditional and online

Some newspapers are cannibalizing their traditional content when they produce their web property. They are not branding them or using the different mediums for advantageous purposes. In the worse case scenarios newspapers are even marginalizing their opportunities for advertising by seeding both their traditional and online properties with the exact same articles.

In a race to be current, they are not keeping ahead of the trends but are playing catch up with ‘me too’ ideas that may or may not be beneficial to them. They are generally confused with the technology and still trying to figure out how best to align their editorial departments in both on and offline offices. Because there are two distinct mediums that newspapers must pay attention to, they now have the problem of a divided focus which pools from basically the same revenue. In addition the talent pool is producing two different but similar products which raises the questions of internal organization and communication structural changes. There are also legalities of compensation and copyrights considering that newspapers are fleeting dailies whereas online information is searchable and has longevity for articles, photos and graphics.

The future of the newspaper

I believe the newspaper is not dying but evolving, not necessarily because it wants to but because it has to. But this evolution is not a bad thing. If newspapers continue to deliver authoritative in-depth content the younger generation will continue to subscribe (I use this term loosely).

Newspapers have almost lost their brand focus and they need to reiterate it for their target audience. It is said that the newspaper one reads says something about that person’s character and education level. One subscribes to a certain newspaper because they feel it is more appropriate to their identity than others would be. That newspaper’s brand becomes part of an individual’s identity. A similar relation will have to be formed with upcoming generations.

So what is the future? Well the distribution model will change from expensive and time consuming print to electronic dissemination over the ether. The subscription model will still be in place just as the ads will be but newspapers will be able to deliver their content to a range of devices in a timely manner. The articles will be searchable, contain interactive content and develop community followings like they do presently in the online world.

So my hypothetical children may one day sit in their chair eating their pancakes on Saturday morning reading their own personalized funnies that were automatically downloaded to their very thin and flexible but durable electronic paper page that I received when I bought my yearly subscription. They will even flip the pages with the same old finger swipe gesture. The only thing I will miss is recycling all the old newsprint or lining the kitty litter box with it.