Thursday, January 22, 2009
Newspapers
For decades Kodak sold film. Then one day, the ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee 1, Subcommittee 29, Working Group 1 invented JPGs and film rapidly became obsolete. Kodak now sells digital camera and does quite well I think, despite being located in backwards Rochester, NY.
Newspapers are in a similar situation. Their current business is going to zero as fast as you can say "wait keep standing there smiling I need to load another roll of film." It's idiotic to have yesterday's news printed on paper, loaded on a truck, thrown in your driveway, probably not read, placed in the recycling bin, and picked up by another truck.
The brightest minds in the business are racing to figure out what to do before their lenders shut off the lights. Unfortunately, these people, while well suited to report on the fact that they are going out of business, are not well suited to prevent the same. Even the normally saavy Silicon Alley Insider's plan is a weak attempt to delay the inevitable.
Fortunately, I am unencumbered by any actual understanding of the newspaper business, nor the humility to avoid displaying this fact, which allows me to suggest the following course of action.
There are clearly many people who still value receiving a hard copy of the newspaper and are willing to pay, whether it's because they want to read it while traveling, they are old people, or they just hate plants...like vegetarians.
Someone needs to create a standalone printer that end users could obtain, connects to the internet, and prints the daily newspaper in the user's home in the form factor of a traditional paper (large pages double sided, etc). Wireless inkjet printers are like $100, and I can't imagine designing one that meets those specifications would cost much more than that.
These devices could be sold to users, or given to them in exchange for their subscription, similar to a cable box. It would bring the following advantages to newspapers:
1) Almost free distribution (no factories and trucks)
2) International reach (you could print the paper from your home town if you wanted)
3) Removal of timing issues. You could, with no additional cost create an evening issue, or set the dang thing to print a few pages every hour if the user wanted.
4) Digital delivery without relying on [what will later be found to be ineffective] advertising, or online subscriptions fees, which do not work unless you are offering something useful like the WSJ or porn.
The New York Times is the ideal candidate to implement this plan. They have already done most of the work brainwashing their readership about the erroneous risk of global warming, and thus this can be pitched as some kind of premium-added-cost-plant-saving-CO2-reducing-Al-Gore-fellating version of the normal paper.
For decades Kodak sold film. Then one day, the ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee 1, Subcommittee 29, Working Group 1 invented JPGs and film rapidly became obsolete. Kodak now sells digital camera and does quite well I think, despite being located in backwards Rochester, NY.
Newspapers are in a similar situation. Their current business is going to zero as fast as you can say "wait keep standing there smiling I need to load another roll of film." It's idiotic to have yesterday's news printed on paper, loaded on a truck, thrown in your driveway, probably not read, placed in the recycling bin, and picked up by another truck.
The brightest minds in the business are racing to figure out what to do before their lenders shut off the lights. Unfortunately, these people, while well suited to report on the fact that they are going out of business, are not well suited to prevent the same. Even the normally saavy Silicon Alley Insider's plan is a weak attempt to delay the inevitable.
Fortunately, I am unencumbered by any actual understanding of the newspaper business, nor the humility to avoid displaying this fact, which allows me to suggest the following course of action.
There are clearly many people who still value receiving a hard copy of the newspaper and are willing to pay, whether it's because they want to read it while traveling, they are old people, or they just hate plants...like vegetarians.
Someone needs to create a standalone printer that end users could obtain, connects to the internet, and prints the daily newspaper in the user's home in the form factor of a traditional paper (large pages double sided, etc). Wireless inkjet printers are like $100, and I can't imagine designing one that meets those specifications would cost much more than that.
These devices could be sold to users, or given to them in exchange for their subscription, similar to a cable box. It would bring the following advantages to newspapers:
1) Almost free distribution (no factories and trucks)
2) International reach (you could print the paper from your home town if you wanted)
3) Removal of timing issues. You could, with no additional cost create an evening issue, or set the dang thing to print a few pages every hour if the user wanted.
4) Digital delivery without relying on [what will later be found to be ineffective] advertising, or online subscriptions fees, which do not work unless you are offering something useful like the WSJ or porn.
The New York Times is the ideal candidate to implement this plan. They have already done most of the work brainwashing their readership about the erroneous risk of global warming, and thus this can be pitched as some kind of premium-added-cost-plant-saving-CO2-reducing-Al-Gore-fellating version of the normal paper.
