Barnes & Noble, with more than 700 physical locations in the U.S. and an online store, is making a serious attempt to dethrone the Kindle as the early e-reader market leader. Starting at the end of November, the Nook will sell for US$259 -- same price as the domestic-only Kindle. Like Amazon's device, the Nook features instant wireless downloads of books, newspapers and magazines. The Nook will use AT&T's 3G network for its over-the-air downloads. Both devices store about 1,500 books and are about eight inches long and five inches wide. Both take advantage of a wide selection of books available for download -- Amazon touts 350,000 books, while B&N says it will have "1 million" choices, but appears to be including newspapers and magazines in that number.

The similarities end there. Barnes & Noble has added a color touchscreen section to the bottom portion of the device's face. Most of the upper portion supports 16-level grayscale e-ink, but the 3.5 inch touchscreen section enables navigation, browsing and flipping through book cover art. Another key difference: the LendMe technology that allows users to lend the books they've downloaded to anyone else who is using another Nook, or is using Barnes and Noble's e-reader software on a smartphone, PC or Mac. The "borrowed" books disappear after 14 days. The Nook can also access Barnes & Noble WiFi hotspots in stores for downloads and browsing.

Newspaper websites attracted more than 70.3 million unique visitors in June (35.9% of all Internet users), according to a custom analysis provided by Nielsen Online for the Newspaper Association of America (NAA).

Key findings:

• Newspaper websites delivered 3.5 billion page views in June.
• Visitors to newspaper websites during the month spent 2.7 billion minutes browsing the sites over more than 597 million total sessions.
• Nearly six in 10 adults (59%) identified newspapers as the medium they use to help plan shopping or make purchase decisions.
• Some 41% of US adults say they use newspapers more than any other medium to check out ads.
• More than four out of five (82%) US adults have taken some action as a result of a print newspaper ad in the previous 30 days: 61% clipped a coupon, 50% bought something advertised, and 52% visited a store.
• 73% of adults regularly or occasionally read newspaper inserts, and 82% have been spurred to action by a newspaper insert in the past month.

Data provided by Nielsen & MORI Research.

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A total of 545 students receive their local newspaper through Areawide Media's Newspaper in Education program, an ongoing tradition that local businesses are proud to support and continue. Oct. 13 was the first day of the school year the fifth graders at Salem Elementary began examining their local newspaper in the classroom.

"They love it," said Corey Johnson, fifth grade teacher at Salem Elementary. Nineteen students each in three fifth grade classes at Salem Elementary review their local newspaper, The News, to observe the goings-on in the area and also to use the newspaper as a learning tool.

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...how rare it is for reporters at newspapers to actually engage in comments on their articles. Instead, they seem to view the comments with disdain, pointing out how idiotic many comments are. Well, of course that's what happens when the folks at the actual newspaper ignore them. So, while it's nice to see a newspaper like the Cleveland Plain Dealer (whose writers have been advocating for changing copyright law to protect newspaper business models) finally realize that its reporters need to engage in comments in order to foster more of a useful community in those comments...

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With each month, newspapers look less like a business and more like a lost cause. The crisis is acute in the US, where some newspaper groups are in Chapter 11 bankruptcy and there are questions over the long-term future even of venerable titles such as The New York Times and The Washington Post.

The degree to which the travails of papers are a threat to an informed democracy can be exaggerated, particularly by journalists. The internet has made print less profitable but has also made new forms of information-gathering and commentary possible. Bloggers get a bad press but low-cost publishing helps new sources to emerge.

Perhaps some of the reporting done up to now by for-profit papers will in future be funded by foundations or trusts. But the industry should not lose faith in the free market. When people really want or need something, they will pay for it, one way or another. If today’s publishers cannot convince their readers to do so, they will be overtaken by others that can.

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"The assumption is that the e-reader represents a fourth platform. It is not just another mobile device," says Roger Fidler, programme director for digital publishing at the Reynolds Journalism Institute (RJI) in Missouri. In an era when newspapers have to look at multiple platforms, e-readers are "part of the solution".

Then there are potential business conflicts. Papers want to retain a direct relationship with readers, but Fidler says Amazon has a "closed" system: you cannot display anything produced for the Kindle on any other device, except the iPhone. "There's talk of having a Kindle application for PCs and Macs. But it's not out yet."

There is also the question of price. The Sony Reader will currently set you back £219, and in the US, the Kindle DX costs $489 (£310). Publishers - of both books and newspapers - are hoping prices will drop significantly over the next two years as more readers enter the marketplace.

But the biggest issue for the e-reader market is whether or not consumers enjoy using it. "It's slightly ephemeral reading books on the Sony Reader," says Rebuck. "The whole point of books is that the physicality is quite important. Once you have finished it you can keep it."

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With 24-hour news channels and Web sites that offer much of the news content free, newspapers are at a critical time in their life cycle. How does one run a profitable newspaper is a crucial strategy question.

The key issue is to be able to shape the newspaper to satisfy the needs of different potential target groups. One reads the paper for different kinds of news (world, national, regional, local), opinions, advertising of different forms, and so on. Entry into this industry at a local level was relatively easy (one could subscribe to newsfeeds, and add some local reporting), and there were few substitutes.

Trying to establish a regional or national reputation took a lot of work, and required investment in bureaus, sharp reporting, and skills in leading the news, by highlighting issues before they were common knowledge. Papers built their reputation for scoops, and the reputed ones worked hard to maintain integrity, which not only meant truthful reporting but also keeping news coverage separate from opinion and hence drawing readership from all sides of the debate.

The question now is whether it is only the medium, that is, how we get the news, that is challenging the existence of the papers, or also whether ease of access to the news has made the customer pickier about the kind of news the reader wants.

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The company recently conducted a survey of its newspaper-publishing clients and found that in 2008 they increased the number of videos they uploaded by 1,500 percent, posting an average of 186 videos per month in 2007 to an average of 638 videos per month in 2008.

The company also found that consumers are watching more video content on newspaper sites, as video streams grew an average of more than 35 percent quarter over quarter. Last quarter, Brightcove’s newspaper customers reported 42.8 million video streams from their Web sites, compared with 15.3 million in the year-earlier period.

Newspaper companies are also training staffers in videography and hiring ex-television producers to produce their own video content.

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Google Inc. Chief Executive Eric Schmidt called on newspaper executives to create a "new format" for online journalism, including delivery methods that give consumers personalized content they want to read. During a speech at the Newspaper Association of America's convention in San Diego, Mr. Schmidt called on the industry to join with Google to create products that would entice readers to go beyond headlines listed on search-engine pages.

"Advertising still is the best way to reach a large audience," Mr. Schmidt said. "It's very difficult to hold information back" on the Web.

He foresees a place for micro-payments, which could allow a reader to pay a few cents each for an article they want to read online. He said technologies are available to allow publishers to create an online micro-payment system, like the one pioneered in the music business by Apple Inc.'s iTunes.

Mr. Schmidt compared the digital future of the publishing industry to that of the TV business, where broadcast networks draw the largest audience with an ad-supported model, and cable networks attract more niche audiences with subscription-based models and a combination of the two.

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PC WORLD, 10 Mar 2009: When the Christian Science Monitor went online-only in October 2008, it signaled a changing of the guard. The 100-year-old newspaper acknowledged that people are more apt to log on to their computers than they are to pay for a print subscription. The move was clever and fast, and it exuded a glimmer of what was to come.

There's no question about journalism's ability to survive. It will make it. Whether it be by monstrous organizations or homemade blogs, the news will always be found. What most people have to get used to, now that e-Ink and URLs are here to stay, is the medium. While it's sad to see the old bastions go -- especially due to the massive staff cuts such changes imply -- now is a unique epoch in which we can witness the future of how events are reported.

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