Journa It's Journalism, Jim, but not as we know it!

The kindling flame of the paper paper.

Prophets of doom everywhere herald the ending of the age of paper. Out with the old, in with the new: electronic books and newspapers are here to take over. No more inky fingers after reading a newspaper or hitting the butler over the head for not having properly ironed it. Now you can finally get rid of your dog as you don't need it to fetch your morning newspaper anymore. And best of all: no more cutting trees down! It's all about the environment, right? In brief: newspapers and magazines are so 20th century, man!

And lo and behold: Amazon's Kindle is here to steal your geeky heart. A neat little device featuring a great monochrome 6-inch screen using the newest E-ink technology to allow for much less eye-strain -a major problem when reading a lot of text on a computer. And if that's not enough, Amazon just recently released the Kindle DX which features an even larger screen. But is this gizmo really that revolutionary?

Digi beats paper?

One of the most frequently used arguments is that this new generation of reading gadgets could offer struggling newspapers the opportunity to finally react to online media that have been taking over. In the past many print media companies decided to make their articles freely available on the Internet. It turned out to be an expensive mistake: sales slumped because many readers started reading the free articles online. Newspapers and magazines, already troubled by the economic crisis, were forced to cut down on staff because advertisers began preferring so called net natives over the local traditional ones. Digital ads not only have the potential to reach a much larger audience, they are also more attuned to the quickly evolving web than traditional print media: moving images, the ability to go directly from an ad to the advertiser's website with just one click. Online advertising took print media by storm and, according to experts, the shift is unlikely to abate.

Models to have readers pay for online news content were developed to make up for lost revenue streams, but according to Steve Outing, a journalist and consultant, it just wouldn't work:

"Let me say at this point that I am not a "content must be free" advocate. Newspapers can develop new, niche content and get some people to pay for it online. But newspapers' existing content is better off being free on the Web, as Keller has implied, so as not to kill the opportunity of growing online advertising and the benefits of ubiquitous distribution of news content to reach the widest possible audience -- and thus have greater institutional influence on society."

Outing proposes a 'softer' alternative: keep the news content itself free but charge for extra content through a "membership program' with extra benefits for paying members. "It's the carrot approach, not the stick one."

Amazon to the rescue.

Amazon's Kindle and other e-book readers could likewise help traditional media adjust to the new world. According to Jef Bezos, Amazon.com's founder, "there are genuine opportunities to save journalism, and we're excited about helping with that."
Amazon offers Kindle owners subscriptions to more than 58 newspapers  and magazines. Although data on the number of sold subscriptions has not yet been released, Amazon and many of the participating publishers say they are satisfied with the results.
Once a day subscribers get wireless updates, eliminating delivery and printing costs. Experts suggest that media companies might evolve to becoming foremost a digital news publisher with a secondary and limited print product. In the future a printed daily newspaper may even become a luxury item.

But it's not sure yet whether the Kindle will actually be able to save many newspapers in the troubled realm of print media. According to Roger Fidler, the program director for digital publishing at the University of Missouri, Columbia, it may already be too late:

"If these devices had been ready for the general consumer market five years ago, we probably could have taken advantage of them quickly. Now, the earliest we might see large-scale consumer adoption is next year, and unlike the iPod, it's going to be a slower process migrating people from print to the device."

It also remains to be seen whether consumers really want an e-book reader that can only only render black and white, however much shades of gray. Another hair in Amazon's butter could be the highly anticipated Apple tablet. A quite common remark on gadget geek forums is that they would rather wait for Apple's full color alternative. Although Apple's tablet computer would not boast the easy-read E-ink technology, the ability to surf and run other applications besides rendering text could lure many away from the limited and expensive Kindle. For Paul Starr, a professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton, it's simple:

"As the Kindle develops, how multifunctional will it be? More like a dedicated word processor, which only does one thing, or more like a computer, for which applications are written by the thousands? The more versatile it is, the better it will compete."

Shapes and sizes

It will also be very interesting to see how the appearance of articles and publications will transform with the introduction of these new media, if it changes at all. The rise of smartphones, which boast PC-like functionality, has already prompted development of special applications that allow users to read e-books or news articles on their mobile. The most popular of these is without doubt Stanza, an application for the iPhone that already boasts one million downloads. Due to the small size of smartphone screens the original lay-out of books and magazines cannot be preserved. The applications format the text to best fit the screen. Users can also zoom in or change the text font which is then directly rendered on-screen. With books the original text is of course preserved as it would obviously be impossible to make a 'light' version (although one could of course always try to overclass Monty Python's summary of Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu). But some news media do offer briefer news articles that have been optimized for smartphones and only give a short description. A bit similar to how newsfeeds work.

According to Aimée Van Hecke, CEO of Sanoma magazines Belgium, there will be little difference between paper or digital Sanoma publications:

"Basically articles written specifically for e-book readers as the Kindle will remain the same: lay-out will be virtually similar to traditional print-media, the articles' length will be exactly the same. The only thing that's really going to change is the interactivity in articles: if you don't know a word you can just mark it and look it up directly with your e-book reader, or you can click an advertisement and go directly to the advertiser's website."

The first two generations of the Kindle only support Amazon's proprietary AZW file-format. Files in other formats can be converted by Amazon for a small fee. The Kindle DX on the other hand also supports native PDF. This means that the first two generations work in a way similar to the smartphone applications and that the zoom function disrupts authentic lay-out preserved in the original format. The Kindle DX on the other hand allows users to zoom in on PDF articles without disruption. Because of its larger screen (9,7 inch compared to 6 inch) Amazon has been promoting the DX as the perfect device to read newspaper articles on.
Some early adopters, apparently more attuned to online news, have been rather critical though: "Kindle subscriptions are just digital versions of a printed newspaper and do not refresh as the news changes. There are also no updates until the next publication." A bit like a paper newspaper, really.

Old school nostalgia

Although it is clear that digital media and electronic e-book readers have had a great impact on the traditional media, it remains to be seen how the situation will further evolve. As more and more players are hopping on the e-car, several signs seem to indicate that the Kindle and its peers may be successful. A couple of American universities are even working on pilot projects to replace students' textbooks with digital ones. Limited functionality remains a major snag though, and may even prove the e-book's undoing in the run against evolving netbooks and laptops.

The media shift is not going to be overnight though. Notwithstanding the fact that subscriptions are still falling, there is always going to be a group that prefers ink and paper over virtual. It's just so much more difficult to impress anyone with an anonymous Kindle peeking out of your bag compared to for example, an issue of the International Herald Tribune or Le Monde Diplomatique. And how are you ever going to impress your intellectual friends without a bookrack stuffed with all the right books?

Call me an old fashioned, but to me the paper papers' flame is still alive and sparkly. Although I'm a recently self-confessed geek with an appetite for gizmos, I'll stick to my analog paper, thank you very much!

What can I say, I just like the smell of ink in the morning.

                                                                 Erik Aerts

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