"newspapers" entries
Coming to Grips with the "Unthinkable" in Publishing
While much of the Twitter chatter this past weekend was about the annual South by Southwest festival and conference, there was quite a bit of "retweeting" of links to a post by Clay Shirky: During the wrenching transition to print, experiments were only revealed in retrospect to be turning points. Aldus Manutius, the Venetian printer and publisher, invented the smaller…
Clay Shirky's "Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable"
Sometimes Clay Shirky astounds us by articulating something we’ve never thought of, and sometimes he astounds us by telling us something many have thought, but never so clearly and so compellingly. But always, he astounds. Into the first category falls the claim that he made in his keynote at the last Web 2.0 Expo that “the critical technology of the 20th century…was the sitcom.” Who would have thought that so penetrating an analysis could hinge on such a preposterous assertion! (If you haven’t already done so, read the transcript or watch the video.)
Hearst Gets Into the E-Reader Game
Hearst Corp. is developing its own wireless e-reader that may debut this year. From Fortune: According to industry insiders, Hearst, which publishes magazines ranging from Cosmopolitan to Esquire and newspapers including the financially imperiled San Francisco Chronicle, has developed a wireless e-reader with a large-format screen suited to the reading and advertising requirements of newspapers and magazines. The device and…
Photos from New York Times R&D Lab
Nick Bilton was a hit yesterday at the TOC Conference, and during his keynote he talked about what they’re working on with content at the NYT R&D Lab. Nick was kind enough to give a few of us a private tour earlier this week, and here’s some photos from the trip:…
The Economic Realities of Digital-Only Newspapers
Alan Mutter has an incisive analysis explaining why an all-digital strategy would be unacceptably painful for the majority of established newspapers: Because newspapers on average derive approximately 90% of their sales from print advertising, the only ink-on-paper newspapers that can afford to attempt digital-only publishing are the ones that are irreversibly losing money. Moving to digital publishing is the…
Google Doesn't Have Answers for Newspapers
Fortune Magazine has an interesting interview with Eric Schmidt about Google's relationship with newspapers: Maybe their time [newspapers'] has just come and gone? No. They don't have a problem of demand for their product, the news. People love the news. They love reading, discussing it, adding to it, annotating it. The Internet has made the news more accessible. There's…
Newspapers Pursued New Tech with Wrong Intentions
In a column at Slate, Jack Schafer says newspapers' overcommitment to form and content lock-in led to the industry missing Web opportunities: From the beginning, newspapers sought to invent the Web in their own image by repurposing the copy, values, and temperament found in their ink-and-paper editions. Despite being early arrivals, despite having spent millions on manpower and hardware,…
The Inevitability of Newspapers' Downturn
In a post at Boing Boing, Clay Shirky takes issue with the newspaper industry's slow adaptation to digital and its propensity for playing the victim: I'd only arrived on the net in '93, a complete newbie, and most of my opinions about newspapers came from talking with Gordy Thompson of the NY Times and Brad Templeton of Clarinet. Instead,…
800 Newspapers Coming to Iliad E-Reader
iRex Technologies scores scores of newspapers for its new iLiad e-reader. From E-Reads: Digitally delivered news is gaining momentum and as we turn the corner to 2009 it's gotten a rocket boost from the Dutch firm iRex Technologies, which announced it has made a deal with NewspaperDirect to deliver 800 newspapers on iRex's Digital Reader 1000 … The iRex/NewspaperDirect…
Politico Expands Content Sharing Service
Here's a sliver of positivity from the gloomy news business: Politico's content sharing network has added more than 100 clients since launching in September. From Editor & Publisher: Politico Network, which makes the political news Web site's content available in exchange for advertising placement, launched Sept. 9, according to Beth Frerking, an assistant managing editor. Newspapers and broadcast outlets…