Struggling US newspapers look to e-readers

Too little, too late. They should have been thinking about migration years ago.

Now if they could bring the Kindle price down to half of what it is listed for....then maybe it will take off...Right now they want an arm and a leg for it. FORGET IT! its not even color.

To say that nothing will save the newspaper industry because there is so much news already available for free on the Internet is like saying that there is no future for writing novels because there are already so many novels available. But the existence of previously written novels never stopped new novelists from being successful. However, undoubtedly, there is no future for novelists who write for free.

The idea of newspaper has always been to provide, foremost, local news, and if any of those newspaper death-wishers want their local news on the Internet, where would they go? Of course, the websites of their local newspapers, where newspapers are faithfully making their contents available free of charge.

The survival of most newspapers has always depended on their unique local contents--their national and international contents were, with a few exceptions of major city newspapers such as New York Times and Washington Post, always provided by the international press agencies such as Reuters and AP. In fact, nowadays, even the major city newspapers are using content provided by the news agencies rather than by their own reporters to the point that most American newspapers have national and international sections that are virtually identical. Their readers know this, and they are now going to the sources of the news now that it is possible to do so via the Internet.

But local news is not so easy to obtain, although there are local TV station providing them on fixed time slots. Local TV stations have always competed with their local newspapers, but until the advent of the Internet, newspapers had an advantage in that once the newsprint was in the reader's hand, it was always readily available, whereas TV viewers had to wait for local news to come on at pre-specified times. This is no longer the case, since all local TV stations post their news on the Internet.

TV stations, in essence, have become more like paperless newspapers also. Thus, in order for newspaper to survive, they must become more of a multimedia provider than just a printed news provider. This was not possible in the days of limited TV channel availability and tight cross-ownership restrictions set by the FCC, but the Internet makes all that mute. Here are some strategic points for newspaper to consider:

First, the newspapers buying news content from the international press agencies must demand that those agencies stop providing news free of charge on the Internet; after all, why should newspapers pay for the news agencies' reporting, but not the online readers who can access the agencies' website directly? This does not make any business sense.

Second, all locally generated newspaper content must be fee-based for access, and newspapers must stop providing links to the full articles to news aggregators, such as Google--only the headlines and short trailers should be posted. If Google doesn't like the idea, newspapers should invest in a venture to build a news aggregator website that caters to their interest better than Google.

Third, establish an industry-wide agency similar to RIAA to enforce the copyright law so that the Internet hobbyists cannot repost news without prior approval from the sources of their reposting. It would also help to ask Congress to pass addenda to the copyright law to tighten reposting requirements and obligations on the Internet on copyrighted news items.

Fourth, newspapers must recognize that the wasteful practice of printing news on millions of tons of newsprint must come to an end (the same for magazines); thus, the transition to e-readers is inevitable, logical, and environmentally sound.

Fifth. E-readers should be provided as a part of each annual newspaper subscription. Furthermore, they should have additional functionalities for subscribing to periodicals, as well as reading online e-books (each newspaper can build its own unique library of e-books with reviews, recommendations, and limited-time free offers). The bundling of e-readers with subscription is probably the most difficult part of the survival strategy, as it might not be financially feasible until the cost of each e-reader reaches at $100 or less. It is certain to happen soon, but perhaps not soon enough to save many of the major newspapers that have high level of expense to maintain their operations.

There are many, many other things that can be done to re-enhance the attractiveness of local newspapers, but in reality, what they must become is not just newspapers to keep up with the latest news but multimedia news sources and the hubs for all sorts of reliable and unique local information that otherwise might be hard to find in any other single website. Local newspaper people know their locality the best, so they need to take full advantage of their knowledge with the help of the Internet.