The Newspaper Isn't Dead YetWhy newsprint still beats the Kindle.

The problems with graphic display, ranked stories and timeliness of updates are all very easily correctable once Amazon or the newspaper company decides to do it. I don't have a kindle but you have to believe that a thin, full page electronic reader with a long battery life (graphics and color will help) has got to be the future of newspapers AND many (but not all) magazines. The cost to layout, print and delivery and everything else that goes into production can be totally eliminated. This is huge. This is how and why newspapers CAN survive and thrive. This model will work for many magazines, many blogger types can create their own magazines, you can read Slate on the road without your bulky computer...the benefits are enormous. Now, the business model is still flawed. These readers should cost far less, because the manufacturers should get a cut of the subscriptions, and the subscriptions should cost next to nothing. The papers can still sell advertising for revenue but at, say, $1 a month for the NYT instead of $60 for the print edition, the subscription base will increase a thousand-fold.

How great would it be to have a very thin, instant-on, lightweight, cell driven (for regular updates), stash of 10 newspapers and 50 magazines at your fingertips.

I'm sure this will eventually happen if the publishing world isn't as stupid as the music publishing world.

-- tcn
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I wonder if some of the objections raised to reading the Times format on Kindle wouldn't be solved by the technology the New Yorker uses to digitally display its magazine on a computer screen. Absolutely the whole New Yorker is displayed up to two pages at a time. (i.e. it includes ads and cartoons and is in color.) One is able to skip to any two page sequence so it has some of the attributes of folding over pages to a part of a publication. Right now it is somewhat slow but that I think that is a separate problem of connection.

-- Raywish
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