I have a subscription to Time magazine and in their latest issue I read an interesting piece on new ways, or gadgets, to read text. One of them was called the Kindle, something Amazon has worked on and recently put out the second installment of. With this specific product, one can download books wirelessly where 3G or Wi-Fi are located. I personally don’t see the point in paying so much money for an electronic device, when what you’re actually reading is cheaper, and really not that much of a burden to carry around. Unless you lug around and read a book this big all the time.
This story was coupled with an article about how to save newspapers, a story which I was fascinated by. It kept me thinking about it as perhaps a saving grace to the journalism profession. Why did newspapers allow readers to look at their content online for free? I agree with the article and think that, if it were as easy as purchasing a song on Apple’s iTunes, people would spend a little bit to read content online. After all, as the author of the second story points out, it still costs money to send reporters to places around the world, and advertisements can only pay so much. The thing that was most interesting to me still, was that with the downturn of the newspaper, Isaacson points out that there are more readers of papers than ever right now.
From Time, second paragraph:
“There is, however, a striking and somewhat odd fact about this crisis. Newspapers have more readers than ever. Their content, as well as that of newsmagazines and other producers of traditional journalism, is more popular than ever — even (in fact, especially) among young people.”
This excites me as a journalist and editor on the DEN, that maybe after all we’ve seen in the past year or so, that maybe there is a hope for journalism. Personally, i wouldn’t like to deal with an electronic device to read a story. Newspapers and magazines will do just fine for me.
