Following on from some of early articles this week on news and newspapers, Shaun at PDA-247 has written a blog post Digital Newspapers: Stuck at Page One? which covers his experience of The Times Online on the iPad.
In the post, he thinks that he’s getting value for money for his £2 a week as the content and presentation are good. Although some people are still reluctant to pay for news content, he’s done the maths and even with the (assumed) 90% reduction in subscribers, the website will still pull in £1 million every year. Not huge money, but it’s early days.
Shaun says that people are used to getting something physical for their money. People like the physicality of books and DVDs though I think it’s as much about having the item to show off your good taste rather than the item itself. Anyway, the physical nature of books and DVDs hardly counts when it comes to newspapers as most people throw them away once the paper is read.
He closes by suggesting that newspaper reading is dwindling because of competing pressure on our free time. This is the era of satellite TV, the internet, the social network and the poor old newspaper has fallen by the wayside.
All good points and worth giving the orginal article a quick read.
Ultimately it always revolves around content and it’s relative value. Why do people buy coffee table books? Obviously in part to accessorize their furniture arrangements. In the case of a coffee table book, it’s almost as much about the content and design of the cover as it is about what’s inside. Some people accessorize with books, DVD’s and other media.
I suspect that as content delivery continues to change people will move towards different decorative accessories as currently popular trends progress.
There may be some folks that accessorize with newspapers, but if they do it’s likely they are just lazy about throwing them away.
I typically pass several newspaper stands a day, and I almost always give the exposed upper fold of the front page a cursory look as I walk by, almost as if I’m glancing through a passing website. Newspapers here in the U.S. really aren’t giving much in the way of news. I can and generally do get far more current, relevant and accurate information from a few minutes online than I can by looking through a newspaper. In the U.S. at least, much of the actual newspaper content is lacking in personal relevance.
I got over the idea of collecting books on shelves a long time ago. Since watching a number of episodes of the TV show “Hoarders” I’ve been on a bit of a personal crusade especially in the past year to kill the clutter. I’ll pay for digital content to consume, not to physically collect.