E-readers dominate discussion on future of journalism

Media representatives discussed the future of news readership.

By Kaylen Ralph

Published March 9, 2010

E-readers and their impact in the journalism industry were the main topics of discussion during Monday's Digital Publishing Alliance conference.

Representatives from legacy media companies, such as newspapers and magazines, as well as from software and device companies congregated in Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute to listen to and engage in several panel discussions.

The first panel, "Current State of Newspaper and Magazine E-Reader Editions," featured a panel of speakers from various venues in the journalism field. Vince Kern, senior director of Technology/Innovation for Detroit Media Partnership, started the panel with a presentation of Detroit Media's recent innovations to its business model and preparations for the onset of an e-reader.

"I think small- and large-scale e-readers are great devices for customers," Kern said. "You'll quickly and easily adapt your reading habits. It will be interesting to see. However, when these devices to get out on the market, one of the critical components that we haven't been able to do yet is research on customer preferences. No matter how well we design our products for the readers, they need to be reader tested."

The Detroit Free Press and The Detroit News, both under the jurisdiction of Detroit Media Partnership, each have a different look regarding e-reader design. Kern said the Detroit Free Press model has more stories and fewer photos, and The Detroit News went with a more graphical approach. Kern said everything is still in the early stages of development.

"It's not something we're just beginning,” he said. “It's something we're in the middle of and working through.”

Business Development Manager of LibreDigitial Blake Pollard also talked about the work that still needs to be done and the issues that still need to be considered. He cited such things as file size affecting how long people wait for content to download and how long consumers will be willing to wait for their daily paper to be in their hands or rather on their tablet.

"They're not extremely powerful,” Pollard. “You focus on not only what the design is, but also the file size. It has to be a certain file size, so you can get around very quickly, because if there's delays, the first thing the user's going to do is they're just going to give up on it. They might try a couple of times, but they're not going to stand for taking 20 or 30 seconds to download a page."

With the e-reader, consumers would essentially be able to subscribe to daily newspapers as well as various magazines via their Kindle, iPad or other similar devices. Pages would be laid out in a format that would allow subscribers to dive in and out of different sections and between the front page and more in-depth content. Pollard raised the issue with trying to market a device for reading a daily newspaper when it was designed to download large blocks of text once in the form of books.

"People are buying these devices still for books, and being able to subscribe to newspaper, magazine content is really more of a convenience factor for them to buy it," Pollard said. "If they start to love reading on this device, then they're going to consume anything and everything."

At a later session, Sean Reily, the Los Angeles Times' editorial planning and administration director, spoke more about the business side of things and brought up some similar unanswered questions.

Members of the audience asked Reily his opinion on whether major daily newspapers, such as the New York Times or The Wall Street Journal, should develop their own form of an e-reader. Reily said despite newspaper publishing online content and e-readers both being electronic, there were still some notable differences.

"(The e-reader) is an electronic platform, but it's made for a much more immersive reading experience," Reily said.