The News and the Kindle DX

I've been playing a few days with the Kindle DX, the new larger Kindle from Amazon especially designed for students and newspaper readers. No, I didn't buy one. I'm one of three faculty with a grant that purchased some to study whether the gizmos have a chance to help newspapers.

I like the thing.

I've been reading the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which is nice since the AJC quit distributing it's dead-tree version to the Athens market a few months ago.

We'll be handing the tablets to people with a subscription to the AJC to study how appealing real people find this way of reading the news. In fact I emailed three major players at the AJC to see if they'd like to participate -- given we're studying their newspaper and they might find the results kinda important -- and I didn't get a single response. Not even a "no thanks." And they wonder why they're struggling. Sheesh.

Now that I've nailed the navigation, I really kinda like it for reading the newspaper. Not as much as I like printed paper, but it's okay. Bad side: only one update a day. Good side: I really don't want to look at my Kindle all day long. And I've yet to read a book on one, so I can't say much about that experience.

Will the Kindle save newspapers? I'm guessing not, but for a small, select audience -- one that loves reading and perhaps travels and needs to take one slim piece of hardware rather than lug a bunch of paperbacks -- this has promise of at least helping, of creating a small revenue stream. The bad news for papers is Amazon often asks for 70 percent or more of the small subscription fee.

How does this fit with what people know? Obviously, any increase in news consumption is good, and for me the Kindle has made available a lot of state news I missed, mainly because I'm not so much a fan of reading a web site for news beyond a check for updates. No, the Kindle is for people who immerse themselves in the reading experience, which leads to far more knowledge about public affairs than mere exposure to television. But for the Kindle to succeed people will need to see that it is good not just for news (which won't be enough of a draw) but also for other stuff, like books and magazines and whatever else they can squeeze into the thing.

But yeah, I kinda like it. Then again, I didn't have to spent over $400 to play with it.

Will the Kindle Save the News?

The Kindle 2 is that neat bit of lightweight tablet technology put out by Amazon that'll let you read books, magazines, and newspapers. So I have to wonder, will the Kindle (or readers like it) save the news?

The math is bad. It's expensive to collect the news (opinion is cheap, but news is expensive). The decoupling of advertising from news, especially for newspapers, is causing serious cuts in newsrooms across the country. Less news is getting reported, because let's face it, nearly all the news out there is generated by newspapers. In part people don't like reading paper, so you have to wonder if the Kindle can help. We're going to test just that soon as part of a study, so I'll report back, but if we can find a way to "iPod" the news then perhaps we can also salvage political knowledge.

I'm hopeful, but not convinced. A systematic study will tell us more than people blathering opinions on blogs (er, kinda like what I'm doing now).

The Kindle is Kool

Colleague Dean Krugman showed me his Kindle 2 this morning and now I suffer from serious techno envy.

Yeah, that's all well and good, but how does it fit my blog on what people know? Well, you can read magazines and newspapers on the thing, not just mysteries and SF and novels about puppies or vampires or whatever. That's the potential -- a way to keep up with the news without paper and without being stuck with a desktop or even an annoying laptop computer.

I admit $350 is too much. It's gotta come down. But here in Athens the Atlanta newspaper will soon stop delivery at my driveway, and they also happen to deliver the NYTimes. So if I want to read the Times and not do it on my computer, this has potential. The Kindle is really best for people who travel, kinda like laptops when they first came out, but I'm at home now typing on a laptop because we have no desktops in the house. Why bother? They take up valuable space, so we have wireless and laptops and can work wherever the hell we please.

With the Kindle, I can read anything I want, wherever I please. That's the potential, once they get the cost down just a smidgen. And when that happens, I hope it means news and information will once again move to the front of the bus.

Saving the Non-Paper Paper?

For decades we've listened to chatter about tablets and e-paper, ways to read the news in a simple, clear, portable manner. The Kindle 2 is really for book reading (I want one, btw, if you're shopping for me). And here's a piece on e-readers of the next generation aimed less at books and more at magazines and newspapers. It could have a huge impact in the success of print news, which is in turn a major factor in what people know.