A Potential Future for News Consumption

With more and more content of traditional news sources being available online, but lacking a viable monetization strategy and also with the emergence of ground-breaking technologies able to advance new reading habits for the average consumer the publishing industry is to undergo great change in 2010. Amazon’s Kindle opened the way for digital readings and soon after competing offers started to flood the market – still, here in Romania ebook readers remain quite scarce, iRiver Story being the only gadget sold here up to the present.

Nevertheless, gorgeous imagery which often accompany the stories in printed magazines are unattainable on most devices today due to the inherent limits of e-ink displays. Machines like the Apple tablet rumored to be coming out in 2010 are expected to provide digital readers with rich and immersive experiences when going through their periodicals, books or RSS feeds. These portable tablet e-readers which promise to integrate editorial services available via always-on wireless connection help us imagine how information could be delivered in the near future and how readers might interact with journalistic content. For example, check out this video of Mag+, a prototype developed by Bonnier (Swedish magazine publisher) in collaboration with BERG (a design studio based in London) to get a glimpse at how we might expect news to be consumed in the not so far future.

Source: Bonnier

Regardless, before this type of handheld devices could become reality, publishers have to agree on a common format which could be able to deliver visual rich content (preferably open-source) and to offer advertisers with a viable solution to make the best of their campaigns without risking to annoy the reader with the same gimmicks used in print and on the web.

Reading styles vary for traditional avid readers enjoying their morning coffee alongside with the newspaper or finishing the latest novel of their beloved author, computer users who skim though their PDFs or Word documents or for mobile e-mail addicts tapping trough the day. Now, emerging e-reading solutions force the consumer to develop new reading dependencies, but no publisher should expect mediocre content to capture a greater audience that it otherwise deserves.

E-reading can give the publishing industry a much needed breath of fresh air, but it will become mainstream only if editorial content proves worthy of the solicited price.

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Update 1: Amazon just made available worldwide its Kindle DX (the one with the 9.7” e-ink display).

Update 2: CES 2010 brought us Skiff, an e-book reader featuring the next-gen more durable e-paper display based on LG’s metal foil technology. Also at CES, Samsung launched two e-book readers with built-in handwriting recognition: E6 (6-inch screen) and E10 (10-inch screen).