What is the future of the newspaper?

While the Web is hurting many print companies, Hearst Corporation is trying to use technology to turn the tide in its favour

While the Web is hurting many print companies, Hearst Corporation is trying to use technology to turn the tide in its favour

It is hard being a journalist in the print media and writer on all things concerning the Internet for one simple reason one doesn't always know where one's loyalties lie. As a result of this, writers like me don't know if we should clap our hands at the rise of the Web, or feel sorry for the print media, which the Web seems to be tearing apart. But maybe, just maybe, technology will set right whatever damage it caused in the first place or so Hearst Corporation believes.

The shape of things to come? If e-readers for newspapers catch on, you may soon be reading your favourite paper like this. Pic for representation only

A recent article in Fortune says that Hearst plans to launch an electronic reader that it hopes can do for periodicals what Amazon's Kindle is doing for books. While some may dismiss this as being the dying gasp of the print media, there could be more to this than meets the eye. And we are not saying this merely because we are a part of the print industry.

Print is good

To understand this, ask yourself one question what is it that is so great about print, about any paper page you are seeing? In two words, it is space and speed. You have a lot of real estate, which means that data can be presented to you in a visually attractive form, with no delays for downloading, and this is good both from an editorial as well as from an advertising perspective. And though the Web has a lot of advantages over print like multimedia and the ability to let you read what you want, not what an editor feels you should be reading in some domains, print rules. And this is great not just for readers, but also for advertisers, who find the Web a little stifling with its banner and tower ads.

What Hearst wants to do is combine the two with an e-reader that gives everybody the best of all worlds.

Hearst benefits because they don't have to print so many pages, which is a lot of expenditure especially in a recession year. Readers benefit because they get the feel of a paper and content that is laid out just like in a newspaper. And advertisers also get a lot of advantages because they can show readers big ads.

What's the driver?

We could praise Hearst for innovation, but we have to first understand that this is a classic case of necessity being the mother of invention. In February 2009, Hearst Corporation announced that its San Francisco Chronicle newspaper is undertaking critical cost-saving measures primarily because of losses sustained over a long period of time the paper is said to have lost more than $50 million last year and these losses started way back in 2001. It is either innovate or die for Hearst.

And if this innovation clicks, it could be excellent for Hearst, which according to Wikipedia is one of the largest diversified communications companies in the world with major interests include 16 daily and 49 weekly newspapers, as well as interests in an additional 43 daily and 72 non-daily newspapers, besides nearly 200 magazines around the world.

Analysts say that while you may successfully predict what may happen, you cannot predict what will happen after that happens. But still, let us try. What will happen if e-readers for periodicals succeed? Will you need a Hearst reader for their publications, and another reader for publications from a rival? This is impractical, so maybe international publications should try and get together and come up with a common global standard for such readers. This could be one way of making it successful.

And after that, we can say that old papers never die. They merely go from ink to e-ink the way Web browsers go from link to link.

Hearst and its competitors

Company	Revenue	Growth
Hearst Corporation	4,380	-3.10%
News Corporation	32,996	15.10%
Time Warner	46,984	1.10%
Tribune Company	5,063	-8.20%

Note: Revenues shown in million dollars; 2007 revenues shown for Hearst and Tribune, 2008 revenues for News Corporation and Time Warner; the fiscal year ends in June for News Corporation and in December for all the other companies shown above. Source: biz.yahoo.com

QUICK TAKE
>>Hearst is trying to launch an e-reader
>>This could be good for readers, publishers and advertisers
>>It would be even better if various publishers joined hands to make such plans a success