Look here…

I wrote a piece on the archive for Book Patrol
http://www.bookpatrol.net/2009/03/fax-man-archive-of-austin-g-cooley.html

I’ll tell you what I do. I PRINT IT OUT. And that’s quite amazing because I’m a “web guy” who hasn’t been working in print for 15 years.

People are making decisions to print out individuated news all the time. HP, Xerox and others know this, and that’s why they’re making a bundle on ink cartridges. The only thing I can think of that would really hamper automatic home printing is how much those ink cartridges cost, but it seems like that could be addressed with advertising. Maybe you agree to see more ads for cheaper ink? I’d take that offer in a heartbeat.

Full disclosure: I work on a product that is philosophically similar to I-News called Printcasting (see http://printcasting.com). We’re just now rolling it out in Bakersfield, California, and when we show it to people they — unlike almost everyone in this comment thread — get big eyes and start talking about all the ways they could use it. They’re normal people who don’t think about how things should be, but they do care about how technology can make their lives easier and better when they have less time, more choices and less money than ever before.

You seemed more optimistic about the industry’s ability to innovate a year ago…

“What’s great about the industry is that everything is done in real time. Tomorrow’s paper, we haven’t even really designed yet. It’s just the 24/7 cycle of the news business. It’s very dynamic, there’s always something new.”

Martin Langeveld, quoted in the Bennington Banner, April 3, 2008

https://www.benningtonbanner.com/localnews/ci_8792945

This is true, but the problem is that solutions enabling him to do that already exist. If the newspaper company decides not to print anything six days a week (which would be an excellent decision), it needs to just get all the way out of the printing business, and not sneak back into it by distributing single-purpose home newspaper printers. What the newspapers need to do, and they have very little time left to do this, is to resolve to become fully digital enterprises, and focus on that and nothing else. Let someone else try to sell special printers to some segment of the readers, just as there still is an aftermarket for Model T parts.

A quick response on the economics, via Kevin Reichard on http://www.MinnPost.com, where this conversation is also taking place: “Giving the reader a customized news feed and selling ads around it isn’t a bad idea for a newspaper to do.”

Ads, of course, that the reader would like to see and perhaps wouldn’t see otherwise.

There are a few answers to the question of who would want this, depending on the subscriber. Here’s one: Suppose that the newspaper your father loves stopped publishing on certain days of the week. But your father could get his favorite sections (or columnists, etc.) printed at home on those days. The question is whether the content, cost and ease of use is compelling to him. There are other options, such as the Kindle (if it carried that news content) which pose the same questions of content, cost and ease of use. One platform doesn’t fit all.

If it’s true that printing and delivery of a newspaper is the biggest (or second biggest) cost for publishers, why aren’t they tapping into into home computers, which a majority of their subscribers likely own? Let them click on a story or headline and print it using their own desktop setup.

No, let’s create a new machine, a Kindle-like text reader, something that people will likely have to buy or lease at some ridiculous cost.

Why not simply utilize e-edition publication to its fullest, continue to improve it, and market it for all its technological advantages TODAY?

This story almost made me want to check the calendar to see if that spring forward Daylight-Savings-time move propelled us to April 1.

Furthermore, it seems like the people who’d be most interested in the end-product (paper news) are going to be the latest to the party in terms of adoption. My dad (b. 1929), for example, loves his newspaper, even as i preach to him the wonders of the iphone, laptop, etc. He might even pay $$ for customized paper news. However, I see him and others in his market segment (aka old people) are going to to be the ones who face the highest switching costs (from home delivery) and barriers to adoption, and will be the ones least able to setup and use such a system. Now, that doesn’t mean you might not get a few suckers to sign up and buy the thing, but, how, I ask, does this make my or anyone else’s life easier, more pain free, or more simple?

- The totality of this service, both in technology and content, is not yet public and will anyway evolve over time. So comparing it to something from 1939, while cute, is not as meaningful as imagining what it may be by 2019.

- The operative concept in I-News is choice. The demand by individuals for choice in media drives innovation and new business models. File-sharing music sites innovated and iTunes made the market. Blockbuster built a video store franchise and NetFlix brought the video store home. Starting with choice and figuring out how best to deliver that is the constant question.

- The critique that this “method eliminates or minimizes serendipity” overlooks the possibility that subscribers could choose a “serendipity” option.

I love this part: “Stand by to crash.”