Eric Kaiser

When the Kindle came out some years ago I was kind of “eh” about it. I didn’t particularly like the interface. I thought it was hard to navigate. It wasn’t a very rich user experience. However, I did see the value in a product like the Kindle. Having newspapers, books and other periodicals a click or two away was convenient. I knew it would be a matter of time before Apple created a tablet like device that had a rich, practical, and intuitive interface.

That’s exactly what the iPad delivered.

I’ve been laying awake at night thinking about how the news industry, particularly newspapers, will utilize the iPad. Not many are using the Kindle, so will this be different? I believe the iPad can revolutionize the industry. Here’s what’s been keeping me awake at night.

It’s expensive to print a newspaper. I’m not saying stop the presses, but think about the cost savings and advantages of mailing an inexpensive tablet device to a reader. Sure, the iPad is cost prohibitive at this point. But the first VCR’s weren’t exactly cheap either. Now there’s one in every home.

Apple is in a position to provide some much needed help for the newspaper industry. If they can provide a lower priced, customizable iPad for newspapers that can inject some much needed revenue into the industry.

The NewsPad (my name not Apple’s) would be an iPad appliance newspapers could customize. The customization would be of the opening screen that would be designed to cater to their subscribers. This would have icons for reading the PDF version of the newspaper, a direct link to the newspaper’s web site, another icon for placing a classified ad and perhaps another for customer. This kind of product would enable newspapers to charge the higher subscription rates they are used to with the print product. Please take note of that statement. That is key in this business model.

Another thing that excites me about the NewsPad idea is the low cost publishing of just about anything. This could be another revenue generator for newspapers. Special projects could be bundled into a downloadable PDF or e-Book for a low price. These enhanced versions of the print brethren can have expanded text, commentary by the reporter, video and other multimedia experiences. Have a reporter who wants to write a book? No problem, publish it to the iPad bookstore which is accessible through your company branded page.

Photographers could easily create photo galleries where customers could purchase photos. Since this is a customized application readers could put in keyword watches that can instantly drive them to photos, e-Books and other products for sale.

It will be interesting to watch how small to medium sized newspapers react to the iPad. We already know that the larger daily newspapers have plans to deliver their news to the iPad. The Associated Press is another company to watch. They recently hired Nick Ascheim as general manager of AP Digital with responsibility for its new strategic business unit, AP Gateway. Ascheim was a key player in the success of the New York Time’s web site. The AP might be able to negotiate a NewsPad idea and regain some credibility with the newspaper industry who desperately would like to get rid of them.

The iPad launches April 3. My guess is the iPad will revolutionize the printing industry the same way the iPhone did wireless communication.

I usually don’t make quick hits on a topic, but I just read a post on Reflections of a Newsosaur that made my blood pressure rise.

This sums up his opinion best:

“If we are going to save the tradition of professional journalism, it is vital for publishers to begin producing content that is sufficiently unique, authoritative and valuable to motivate”

Sounds good, doesn’t it? Your editors is probably thinking “damn right!”. We do that everyday, set up the pay wall now!

Resist the temptation. If you read his full post he does make some compelling arguments and even admits that not every market is capable of charging for its content. But your management will overlook that little caveat.

Newspaper web sites must shift their primary focus from connecting people-to-content to connecting people-to-people first, a.k.a. social networking. This is how news is going to get consumed as well as generate new revenue. Will this revenue support the current newsrooms? Highly unlikely. News organizations need to restructure. Many are being forced to through layoffs.

We need creative minds to think of new ways to monetize the changing media landscape. Attempts to setup pay walls is nothing more than last gasp efforts to retain a dying business model in a new media world.

I’ve just finished Day 1 of DrupalCon here in Washington, DC. The session topics were varied and thought provoking.

I went to:

• The Themer’s Toolkit
• The Keynote: State of Drupal by Dries (which was awesome)
• Drupal in the Newsroom, from Mother Jones to New York Observer
• Drupal Module Developement Kickstart
• Beyond the Web: Drupal Meets the Desktop
• Going Live: Content Scheduling With Slot Machine

I won’t bore you with all the details of these sessions. But let me highlight a couple of things as it pertains to newspapers.

There are 1400 Drupalers here this year. That’s 600+ more than last year’s conference in Boston. I’m sure there would have been more, but the conference sold out! This speaks to the community and enthusiasm behind Drupal.

There are a lot of newspaper and magazine people here. I have no way of knowing how many, but I’ve already met 3 new people this year from the newspaper industry. And one of them was from Sweden.

Dries gave a very good overview of how Drupal has evolved from a class project to a full blow content management system. He gave an excellent presentation that I can best sum up by saying we can’t understand and plan the future of Drupal until we reflect and process the history of Drupal.

The “Drupal in the Newsroom” session was interesting in how it spun into how to deal with commenting on newspaper and magazine’s web sites. We are all struggling with how to make these comments relevant instead of annoying. Nick Aster from Mother Jones magazine has some great insight into this as did Allen Freeman from McClatchy Interactive. Here’s their presentation if you would like to listen for yourself.

Nick’s angle was to somehow create a way of collecting these comments and serve them back to the reader as more of a solution to a problem. This would help weed out some of the nonsense. Possible solutions here are allowing users to tag comments as a solution or recommend a comment. The more votes a comment gets the higher up the thread it would go. I like the idea of empowering the community to do things like this. Another key point was getting the reporters and editors involved in the conversation. And please note the use of the word “conversation” over comments. That’s essentially what’s going on here. But the reporter and editor’s voices are missing from the conversation. What a perfect venue for a newspaper or magazine to engage it’s audience on a daily basis.

What is also worth noting here is McClatchy as well as Morris Interactive have embraced Drupal. These are two very large media companies. The reasons why Drupal is popular are varied, but one common reason is the Drupal Community. There is no other CMS that I’m aware of that has this large, or enthusiastic, community around it.

If you are in the publishing business you should, if you’re not already, take a hard look at Drupal. I cannot think of any reason why a news organization should spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a proprietary system. Out of the box it will do the same if not more than any system you will purchase. Don’t embrace Drupal simply because it’s free. Embrace it because of the community and it kicks ass.

The Hearst Corporation announced it was going to charge for its digital content. They publish 16 newspapers which include the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the Houston Chronicle.

This will certainly kill the PI off for good which is already struggling.

I really don’t need to repeat myself on why I think this won’t work. Ready my prior post “Stop the madness, now” if you want get the details.

2009 projections for online revenue are grim. Most forecasters are saying only an 8-9% increase in online sales, which is drastically different than the 40-50% increases the past couple of years, which are still really low and cannot support most newsrooms. Especially large metros with unions.

The really sad part here is Hearst’s online business is going to drop like a lead balloon. Readers are going to get their news elsewhere. An easy thing to do in large markets. Sure, the PI and the Chronicle will say they have “unique” news, but the average reader won’t care about that. They will settle for the same story with a not so unique twist at the local free web site your TV station is doing (they are really the sleeping giants if you ask me).

I do applaud Hearst for looking into e-readers like Kindle. I really think in the next couple of years e-readers will replace home delivery. This would be a huge cost savings to newspapers. Just running the presses can be as much as 70% of a newspaper’s operating costs. Newprint alone is over $700/ton. Think about the additional savings in transportation costs as well.

If you are reading this and you do not work at a newspaper tell me what you think. Would you pay for online access to you local newspaper?

For those of you keeping score, an additional 1,000 journalism jobs were lost this week with many  more on the chopping block.

The Rocky Mountain News published its last edition Friday, February 27. The San Francisco Chronicle and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer are probably on their way out as well.

These are troubling times for journalists and the industry. Below is a documentary about the RMN’s last day. Please watch it.

Final Edition from Matthew Roberts on Vimeo.