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TODAY’S JOLT
E-publishing, beyond the Web
BY DAN KENNEDY

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 5, 2001 — Way back in the early 1990s, before more than a handful of civilians had even heard of the Internet, a few visionaries were contemplating how to deliver newspapers and magazines electronically. One of the more intriguing ideas was put forth by Roger Fidler, then in charge of thinking deep digital thoughts for Knight Ridder.

His notion was to sell or even give people cheap, flat-screen "tablets" — sort of like laptop computers without keyboards — that they could plug into a docking station, most likely connected to their cable-TV boxes. They would then use their interactive TVs to subscribe to whatever publications, or parts of publications, that they wanted. The material would be downloaded overnight. In the morning, they’d simply yank their tablets from the docking stations and start reading.

Fidler’s vision was derailed by the Internet and, even more, by the Web, which unlike the tablet-and-cable-box scenario did not have to wait for technology to catch up — and, even better, promised an endless cornucopia of free content. Knight Ridder, failing to see an immediate payoff in Fidler’s ideas, eliminated his position; these days he’s at Kent State.

But now, with the dot-coms in ruins, a system for content delivery similar to Fidler’s is slowly catching on. It uses laptop computers rather than digital tablets, and it relies on the Internet for delivery rather than dedicated cable systems. But it’s not free, thus solving the dilemma of how electronic publications are supposed to pay the bills. And newspapers and magazines are fully downloadable, which means you can take it with you rather than being chained to your Internet connection.

Already, publications such as the Weekly Standard are offering the full, downloadable magazine for subscribers to the print edition (see "Media," This Just In, October 4). Now comes the next step: selling an entire publication online, completely untethered to print.

Perhaps the most striking example is the New York Times Electronic Edition, unveiled on October 29. Unlike the Times’ Web site, the electronic edition is an exact replica of the city edition, complete with photos, ads, and the like. Because the daily download is anywhere between 10 and 35 megabytes, the Times recommends a high-speed connection such as a cable modem (looks like Fidler was at least half-right even about that). Unfortunately, it’s only available for Windows-based computers, at least so far. Another problem is that you can’t buy a single issue; the cheapest offer is $13 for six weeks of the Monday-through-Friday papers.

The electronic edition is distributed by NewsStand.com, an Austin-based operation of which the New York Times Company is part-owner. Other publications available at NewsStand.com are the International Herald Tribune, the Toronto Globe and Mail, and London’s Sunday Times. And by the way, you can watch Times Company president and general manager Janet Robinson wax rhapsodic about the Electronic Edition at C-SPAN.org; just enter " Janet Robinson " in the search engine.

A cruder but more universal electronic edition is being offered by the Christian Science Monitor. The Boston-based Monitor is posting the complete newspaper as a plain PDF file, of the sort read by Adobe Acrobat software. (NewsStand.com’s software adds its own proprietary extensions to Acrobat.) Thus, the e-Monitor can be downloaded to a Mac as well as to a Windows-based machine — or even loaded onto a Palm Pilot using free conversion software available from Adobe’s Web site.

You can also buy a single copy of the Monitor for $1. Given that the print edition costs only 75 cents, this is not exactly a bargain. According to the paper’s Web site, $1 is the cheapest credit-card transaction it’s allowed to offer. Supposedly the paper is looking into alternatives that would allow it to lower the price.

All of this, of course, begs the question of why anyone would want to download newspapers and magazines rather than read the print editions. Well, consider that some publications simply aren’t available in print: the city edition of the Times is sold only in Metropolitan New York, and most likely you will not find the Christian Science Monitor at a convenience store near you.

Then there are the matters of cost (printing and distribution add up to more than half of most publishers’ budgets) and the environment (e.g., trees). Add them all up and you’ve got some powerful incentives for both publishers and customers — someday, at least — to switch from paper to electrons.

Issue Date: December 5, 2001

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