The critical state of the declining newspaper industry is well-known and well-documented. The continuing expansion of alternative media has taken both revenue and readership from conventional printed newspapers for some time now. Scrambling to staunch the bleeding, newspaper publishers have explored various means to secure incremental revenue…to no avail. Actions such as implementing digital editions helped maintained some readership, but brought in little revenue. At best, these measures have been band-aids, where major surgery is required. The most recent method is to implement an e-reader.
Hearst Joins the Fold
There are several e-newspapers currently available in Asia, for example, The Yantai Daily in China’s Shandong Province. In Europe there is the Sundsvalls Tidning in Sweden and seven leading French newspapers-three main national French dailies, Le Monde, Le Figaro, and Libération; the sports paper L’Équipe; the tabloid, Le Parisien; the business paper, Les Échos; and the entertainment-magazine Télérama-participated in a Read & Go project to test the viability of switching to e-paper as a means of ensuring future profitability. The latest publisher planning to launch an e-newspaper is Hearst, whose print offerings include Cosmopolitan, Esquire, Good Housekeeping, Popular Mechanics, and Seventeen, as well as approximately 20 newspapers.
Larger Screen
However, while books and newspapers are similar, they are different in two critical aspects: size and color. Therefore, Hearst has proposed launching its own device, designed specifically for newspapers. Sources indicate the planned device will approximate the size of a standard sheet of paper, with a larger, rollable screen to reproduce the more-complex layouts of print periodicals. The larger screen will accommodate advertiser ads in the size and format that are used in printed publications and address the size issue. While the concept of a larger screen has been discussed for some time, none are yet commercially available.
“I can’t tell you the details of what we are doing, but I can say we are keenly interested in this, and expect these devices will be a big part of our future,” said Kenneth Bronfin, the head of Hearst’s interactive media group, speaking to Fortune magazine.
The device will use electrophoretic technology from E Ink, a Cambridge, Mass. startup that Hearst has backed for more than a decade. It is a good partnership choice because E Ink has a history of successful implementation of e-paper products and its technology is used for the majority of e-book readers currently available. This is not Hearst’s first foray into e-paper technology. Last year, the publishing company printed an Esquire cover with an e-paper cover as a celebration of the magazine’s 75th anniversary.
In Full Color?
However, while the device will simulate newspapers in size, there is still the issue of color. The initial offering proposed by Hearst would feature a grayscale device. Although there are plans to implement color when available, printed newspapers of late have garnered additional revenue from advertisers because they have offered increased use of color. Until color becomes a reality, it will be difficult to interest advertisers to spend their money in an e-newspaper device. Moreover, readers have come to expect color in newspapers these days. It is doubtful that they will be satisfied with a black-and-white, or even a grayscale version.
Too Little/Too Late
E-newspapers do offer considerable advantages over a printed edition. They would save both trees and significant printing and delivery costs. Due to the wireless data connection, they would offer readers up-to-the minute information. However, until a larger screen, full-color device is commercialized, widespread success is doubtful.
In addition to Hearst’s planned launch of its device this year, Plastic Logic plans to introduce prototypes of a larger reader (8.5″ by 11″), which is said to offer a better alternative to current readers. Unfortunately, for newspapers like The Rocky Mountain Gazette it is already too late. The Denver-based paper was Colorado’s first newspaper and the state’s oldest continually published daily. It closed last Friday after 150 years. For others such as The Philadelphia Inquirer (now in Chapter 11) and The San Francisco Chronicle, a Hearst paper, there is still time, but it is running out. Sources say the Chronicle lost $50 million in 2008, with worse projections for this year. The transition to an e-newspaper may save these papers and so many others that are on the brink of closing. It seems to be a win-win solution and Hearst has taken a leading role in pursuing it.
However, one is still prompted to ask: Is the move to e-newspapers too little, too late? While the specific technology needed can be developed, research and development takes time. Why have newspaper publishers waited so long to consider the move to e-readers for newspapers. Why did they wait until they were on the brink of disaster to embrace a new technology? Does new technology daunt them or are they just too rooted in tradition to see a possible solution because it is innovative?
By Linda Casatelli
e-newspaper, e-reader, hearst
Why did they wait until they were on the brink of disaster to embrace a new technology?
It usually takes a disaster to push your company another direction. What happened when we began to see increases in gas prices? Everyone started talking about green technologies and other sources for energy.
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer will roll off the presses for the last time tomorrow, ending a 146-year run. The Hearst Corporation (the P-I’s owner) has announced that it is ceasing publishing, and that the last copy of the Seattle P-I will be printed tomorrow, on St. Patrick’s Day.
From: http://www.rantrave.com/Rant/Seattle-Newspaper-is-Going-Web-Only.aspx
At the current market pricing of e-paper displays these readers will cost in access of $1,000. A great gadget, but I doubt this is a model that can save newspapers. As pointed out, the time is running out for many papers and it might be too late for many of them to wait until the prices are coming down enough to make this model work.
What I cannot figure out is what the actual cost of the e-ink display is, because, if you consider the technology used to produce it, it must be quite cheap. It seems a lot of meat/price is added for the electronic reader part. The Esquire mag had two displays, one on the outside and one on the inside, and I simply cannot believe that Ford paid those at the current prices of e-readers (granted they are a lot simpler). But if the cost is in the screen, then the electronics cannot have much effect, and the Esquire exercise would have cost Ford almost US$800 per mag!!! Surely they did not pay that much…..so….what is the real cost of the screens without all the electronics….because this price will ultimately determine the success rate of e-paper.
The esquire cover doesn’t use the type of e-paper display which you see in the kindle and other e-reader products. What you saw was E - Ink’s “Ink-in-motion” product. It is meant for cheap POP advertising.
There is a post on it here: http://www.epapercentral.com/point-of-purchase-advertising-and-e-ink-technology.htm
It is true, why isn’t other printers going in with Hearst and investing in a newspaper e-reader, Amazon designed an e-reader to fit its needs of selling novels now the papers need to be looking into it too. Every newspaper is hurting now, they all need to invest in the technology and it might as well all invest into one reader for their best bang for their buck.
Hate to be a contrarian, but e readers are not the way out for newspapers. News-on-paper is not about reading. Most people don’t read newspapers. They scan, search and view news-on-paper. The e reader is for readers. It is not as functional or inexpensive as paper.
On the other hand, for those contexts in which people are forced to read, as opposed to choose to read, the ereader will change the game. It may be the Hearst device, or the Kindle or Plastic Logic. College textbooks will probably disappear in their present form starting this September with the big Kindle. It’s the reader plus the agreement with Pearson, Wiley and Cengage(?).
At any rate the next big thing will be the replacement of K -12 printed textbooks with a combination of e readers and versioned, customized print product.
The problem of newspapers is only partially created by printing on paper. While many people are used to the newspaper format (including screening a page) the younger generations are used to the computer and its specific delivery format (clicking instead of screening). Newspapers have never adopted this model, even in their on-line presence. It would be interesting to see if the Internet generation will also abandon the TV based news delivery.
A wireless e-reader could be a delivery vehicle for Internet style news as well as old-fashioned newspaper style. The final layout will be up to the content provider.
In reality it will be very interesting to see where the Internet will get their information after all newspaper organization have closed their doors.
NH,
I think you’re still trapped by the notion that newspapers are about reading or getting information. While that might be true for a small niche audience, for the mass audience it’s about convenience and the ability to dispose of it easily. Mass markets are not going to want to worry about losing, remembering to take, or spilling coffee on an e reader. Frankly the content in an newspaper is not worth the hassle.
The real draw of most newspapers most of the time is sports, gossip, cartoons and the crossword and most importantly the ads. All very diverting and useful, but not worth the effort of clicking or carrying around the ereader all day.
I don’t think newspapers are going to close. They are already in the process of morphing into business models that make sense from ones that don’t make sense any more.