By: Wayne Robins PDFs Offer Value-Added Features
The Akron (Ohio) Beacon Journal has introduced a compact disc edition, with the entire content of the paper and some value-added extras: For those who can't get enough pictures of the Cleveland Indians in the print edition, for example, the CD might have half a dozen. The patent-pending technology was developed by Mark Kovack, the paper's systems integration engineer.
"We've developed a process that takes the printed pages of the paper, converts them to a PDF [portable document format] file that we burn onto CDs," said Mike Needs, director of Beacon Journal Interactive. Needs guesses that at first maybe two of every 100 readers will adopt the format -- "perhaps people with vision problems, who can use the Adobe Acrobat 'magnifying glass' to blow up the paper."
There's also teen appeal, especially if the Beacon Journal adds stuff such as bonus 'NSync cuts. Needs described the 25-cent CD as an interim step towards launch of a digital newspaper available for subscription online in August.
Also on the "Newspapers: The Next Generation" front, The Philadelphia Inquirer, like the Beacon Journal a Knight Ridder paper, has signed on with NewspaperDirect Inc. to download the paper to digital printers on cruise ships and in hotels.
Wayne Robins (wrobins@editorandpublisher.com) is an associate editor covering new media for E&P.
Copyright 2001, Editor & Publisher.
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