Now, lots of people have lots of ideas. Some think print newspapers will be extinct within 10 years. Some think the government should bail out the industry. Some are working furiously to find just the right formula to satiate both readers and advertisers. But aside from cutting sections or shifting focus, aside from changing formats or emphasizing interactivity, aside from pie-in-the sky (or are they?) print-at-home concepts, not much has changed as far as innovation goes.
But then the managing editor of The Detroit News, Walter Middlebrook, spoke about the changes his paper, along with joint operating agreement partner The Detroit Free Press had just implemented earlier in the week.
You see, those two papers made significant changes to their subscription delivery program by reducing home delivery to just three days a week (I think The Detroit News is delivering, if I remember correctly, on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays; it is a six-day-a-week publication). The two are the first major metro papers to make such a move.
David Hunke, publisher of the Free Press and CEO of the Detroit Media Partnership, told CNN in December 2008 that the action was in response to the ailing economy and the changing tastes of tech-savvy consumers. He expected the newspapers would face about a 9 percent reduction in their workforces under the plan, but stressed that no layoffs were planned for newsroom staffs.
Basically, readers of these two dailies will have four options on non-delivery days:
- Skip the day's newspaper
- Buy a copy off newsstands
- Get news from the papers' free Web sites
- Or, perhaps most intriguingly, subscribe to the e-edition
The e-edition is the new (ish?) wrinkle in all of this. Guaranteed to be in your email box no later than 5:30 a.m., the e-edition is your daily paper in electronic form. It is an assemblance of click and drag PDFs. You can turn the pages using your mouse, and if you want to zoom in and read a particular article, you just roll over it. It is like the very pages my staff and I prepare three nights a week. But instead of sending them to press, they are posted directly online, utilizing a few more bells and whistles intended to improve readability and, presumably, online experience.
As I said, this just launched last week. It's much too early to judge success or failure, but it is fascinating. Will this quell those who can't stand the idea of losing the form of the traditional newspaper? How about those who find many newspaper Web sites to be non-navigable or non-intuitive? You still can't take an e-edition into the bathroom with you, and coffee and the newspaper in bed in the morning won't feel quite the same either.
There is one other option Middlebrook said The News is considering. An device known as the Plastic Logic e-Reader is being bandied about as a potential light-weight, portable, electronic delivery method.
The popular Kindle has been mentioned as a possibility by other newspaper publishers, and sure the field will surely only continue to grow.
I think the idea of the essentially all PDF e-edition is one of the better options I've heard. I'm a purist: I like to hold the paper in in my hands and fold it as I see fit. There is a great amount of intimacy in my personal history with newspapers, dating back all those years ago when I traded sections with my dad over the breakfast table. But I'm in the business and being a part of this business is bigger to me than the paper it is printed on.
Newspapers must adapt. And so must their fans.
What do you think? Will you miss all that paper and ink when it's gone? Would you prefer newspaper get a bailout before GM? Are you happy to see them both go the way of the dodo bird? Are you already online only? What feedback do you want to share with the industry? I'd love to know your thoughts on the matter.
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