New newspaper model may be PDF
David Johnson December 15th, 2006
Many newspaper Web sites offer PDF shots of their front pages, and have for a long time, but a number of papers in Europe and Canada are going extra miles to produce customized print-it-yourself PDF editions and are finding they connect with readers. All this practice needs to pop an old technology to hot-hot media buzz status is a catchy name, like how calling an mp3 file a podcast got everyone jumping. Suggestions lostremoters? Maybe pagecasting or printcasting?
10 Comments Add your own
1. Dave | December 15th, 2006 at 10:49 am
How about “custom papers”…
Why must everything be a flippin buzzword?
2. Safran | December 15th, 2006 at 1:36 pm
I promise this is not the model that “saves” newspapers.
3. Jim | December 15th, 2006 at 2:36 pm
I used to subscribe to the New York Times digital version. It was great. I could view what was on each page very quickly, zoom in to read further. Accessing Web sites, news Web sites is becoming more and more tiresome. They are bloated.
Does anyone like Zinio? It’s easy to read on there and also access more info when there are links.
I will still access news Web sites, but the usually print version, if it were offered in digital format would be great and there could be updates throughout the day on the regular old Web site.
4. Kevin Gamble | December 15th, 2006 at 3:55 pm
PrettyDismalFailures
5. Darryl | December 15th, 2006 at 6:52 pm
Point-and-clearcut?
6. Steve Safran | December 15th, 2006 at 9:18 pm
Some suggestions:
The Out of Times
The Post-Dated
The Deserted News
The Broken Record
The Bee Late
The Messenger is the Medium
The Broken Mirror
The Setting Sun
The Fizzling Star
The Plain Tired
Yesterday Live
7. Dan | December 15th, 2006 at 11:19 pm
This is such a wrong headed idea.
The whole point of online publication is it’s more
efficient, not only for distribution but also for
resource use. Leave it to people ingrained in
the old, to try to fit a new model into the old framework.
If you did a quant of this, I’m fairly confident you will find
it costs more to print 20 pages at home with your
color ink-jet printer, than it does for the newspaper
to print the same thing. It’s like trying to save the
environment by using Ethanol. It costs more and uses more energy to grow, process and transport explosive corn juice than it does to use gasoline. We need to get away from trying to fit the old method into the new world.
Dan
8. Media Blog | December 16th, 2006 at 7:14 am
Newspapers have been producing PDF versions in the US since 2000 or so. There are three our for major vendors that offer the service. The circulation is counted by ABC. Nobody, and I mean nobody, is getting any traction with it. Circulation directors love it because they’ll take any extra subscriber they can get, and publishers who haven’t gotten over the idea that their ego is tied to a printed product love it because it still looks like a printed product. But that’s about all its good for.
9. discreet_chaos | December 18th, 2006 at 8:47 am
As for why nobody is getting traction from it, I have to wonder how much is due to cost. Most every e-edition that I’ve seen costs as much as full year’s subscription, while there remains free copies of some stories on most everyone’s site and in the case of the Albuquerque Journal, the e-edition actually costs over and beyond that which I pay for my daily delivery.
10. Sam | January 18th, 2008 at 7:58 am
Wow, thanks for the excellent information!
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