all talk and no action
Sunday, December 11, 2005
News without the paper
This is something I've been meaning to mention for a while. Over at BuzzMachine, Jeff Jarvis writes about a meeting he had with The Guardian newspaper's management.
The night before the meeting, The Guardian's Editor Alan Rusbridger made a comment to Jarvis about the new presses they'd just spent millions of pounds on to convert the paper into its new Berliner format:
"They may be the last presses we ever own."
Now, I have no idea how long printing presses last, but BuzzMachine says they're good for "a few decades". That's easily enough time for e-paper to be widely, and cheaply, available.
The Guardian has also launched a downloadable RSS reader, which comes pre-populated with RSS feeds from its own site along with the ability to add feeds from elsewhere. This seems like a sensible move: if your readers are getting stories from all over the web, why not help them facilitate this, and try to push some of your own content -- and ads -- their way at the same time? It's also a handy way of keeping your logo on their desktop.
The night before the meeting, The Guardian's Editor Alan Rusbridger made a comment to Jarvis about the new presses they'd just spent millions of pounds on to convert the paper into its new Berliner format:
"They may be the last presses we ever own."
Now, I have no idea how long printing presses last, but BuzzMachine says they're good for "a few decades". That's easily enough time for e-paper to be widely, and cheaply, available.
The Guardian has also launched a downloadable RSS reader, which comes pre-populated with RSS feeds from its own site along with the ability to add feeds from elsewhere. This seems like a sensible move: if your readers are getting stories from all over the web, why not help them facilitate this, and try to push some of your own content -- and ads -- their way at the same time? It's also a handy way of keeping your logo on their desktop.
posted by paul, 4:36 PM
1 Comments:
I'm really excited by e-paper (apart from the scary, in-yer-face advertising potential). The speed of development's fast even by tech standards: Seiko showed a prototype e-paper watch in April, and it goes on sale in January. It's going to be fascinating to see how publishers deal with it - as you've said before, the mobile phone model could be a goer. Subscribe to .net, get a free reader. etc.
