A modest proposal

Newspaper owners need to wake up and smell the pancetta. For six or 12 months before the big economic toilet flush, industry news was full of doom and gloom about declining readership and advertising, all the fault of the big bad Internet. Now that we’re in recession, is it likely to get better? Don't think so.

The response from newspaper publishers: much hand wringing, little creativity. So I’m offering, gratis, a suggestion. Are you listening, press barons?

Adopt an e-reader such as Sony’s Reader Digital Book, Amazon’s Kindle or Bookeen’s Cybook (shown here), or even have one custom built, and start publishing electronically. Oh, I know, the newspapers are all publishing electronically on the Web, but who wants to read an entire newspaper on a computer?

E-readers are book-size devices that use a radical new screen technology that behaves more like paper than LCDs or CRTs. The screen doesn’t emit light (so is easier on the eyes) and is significantly higher resolution than LCDs (so easier to read). And the devices are portable – you can take them to the john.

Why should newspapers do this?

The selfish reason: if they play their cards right, it might help them save their dwindling subscription readership – and the advertising it attracts. The less selfish reason: it would be a boon for the environment.

The print newspaper industry takes a terrible toll on the environment – starting with the very dirty pulp and paper industry, then the transportation of raw materials, the mammoth energy-sucking printing presses that produce newspapers, and finally, the transportation of finished product. All of that comes at a big cost to the newspapers, both economical and environmental.

With an e-reader edition, newspapers could eliminate all of it, sending the complete contents of the paper to subscribers over the Internet, either directly to an e-reader (the Amazon Kindle can connect over Wi-Fi) or to a connected computer for later transfer to an e-reader over a USB cable or Bluetooth connection.

E-readers retail today for between $300 and $400. If newspapers started buying them by the tens or hundreds of thousands to distribute first to environmentally-minded premium subscribers and later to all subscribers, I’ll bet the unit price would drop below $100.

So, let’s see: $100 times the number of subscribers, versus the cost of producing and delivering print editions day in, day out, forever and ever. And what a great premium to attract new subscribers. The e-reader can also be used to read e-books.

Why am I writing about this here, now? Because one of the big frustrations living virtually in Italy is having to read The Globe & Mail online on a laptop screen. It’s cumbersome – all that clicking on links and waiting for pages to display – and hard on the eyes. Especially for me – my laptop has a 13-inch screen.

I’ll leave it for another post to talk about my glorious failed attempts to suck the Globe off the Web and put it on an e-reader in readable format. Much frustration.