By: Steve Outing No doubt, we live in an interesting age to be a publisher and a
challenging one, due to the proliferation of devices that consumers are
beginning to use to read news and stay in touch with their world.
In last week's column, I wrote about the evolution of tablet e-book
readers (like the Softbook and Rocketbook) into all-purpose
content-reading devices. They represent yet another digital medium that
news publishers need to be concerned about.
As the pundits have been telling you, and I've been writing about in
this column for some time, news publishers ideally must set themselves
up to deliver content to a wide variety of digital devices.
The world becomes more complex
Periodical publishers early last century had it easy; they just
published a printed edition and that was that. Even in the mid '90s, it
was pretty simple: in addition to producing the print edition and
sending content to the wire services, publishers had to post content to
their organizations' Web sites.
Fast-forward to a year or two from now. The news publisher must prepare
his content for:
The printed edition. Web browsers. E-mail editions
(filtered by topic, most likely). PDAs (Palm Pilots, CE handhelds,
et al). Wireless Internet mobile phone handsets. E-book readers
(that have become general publication reading devices). Portable
audio devices like MP3 players. Web TV/interactive TV. Small
screens on airline seatbacks. Small screens in Internet-enabled
cars. ... And a bunch of other places where the Internet will reach
people, from refrigerators, to kitchen phones, to elevators, to who
knows what else engineers will dream up.
What's a news publisher supposed to do? How can a news company possibly
support all the formats above, plus those yet to be invented and sure to
come?
Let's start to answer those questions by getting something straight,
right off the bat. The successful news publisher of the future
must support multiple formats. Developments in digital technology
and portable wireless devices have let the genie out of the bottle.
Consumers of the 2000s are not going to be satisfied with getting a news
organization's content only from paper or the Web. For many consumers,
they will select the device that best works for them to consume news and
information and if you as a publisher don't deliver content to
that device, you've lost a customer to a competitor that does.
News publishers have to be in the game of keeping up with all the new
delivery media, says Larry Pryor, director of online programs at
the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Southern
California. While that puts a huge burden on publishers to keep pace,
not to be working on supporting the latest media platforms is to risk
getting so far behind that it becomes nearly impossible to catch up, he
says.
All that reinforces the notion that news companies should already be
developing or implementing XML-based publishing systems, which make it
easier to create content once, then output it through templates to
various media formats.
Some predictions, please
It would be helpful to know how digital Internet devices will evolve, so
that you can make sure your content will be available in a format that
supports whatever device turns out to be popular.
Among those casting a gaze into the future of Internet technology,
there's not exactly consensus yet, but there do seem to be some
identifiable trends. According to John Benditt, editor in chief
of MIT's Technology Review magazine, what we're likely to see are
devices that we have today wireless Internet phones, PDAs, e-book
readers, MP3 players and yet to arrive devices like
'digital paper' wireless tablets that add more and more
capabilities.
Mobile phones will offer more features, to the point that in a few years
they will be multi-functional, powerful computing and Internet-access
devices, as well as phones. (We'd best start calling them
'communicators,' because they no longer will be just 'phones.') Benditt
sees the phone and the PDA (i.e., palmheld devices like the Palm Pilot)
merging into one. In fact, he thinks that within five years, the 'mobile
phone' you carry with you will have gotten so sophisticated that it will
eliminate the need to carry around a laptop computer or, of course, a
Palm Pilot. (Conversely, palmheld devices are expected to incorporate
mobile phone capabilities as well, so consumers will have a choice.)
Many of us will look forward to that day, when the practice of carrying
a mobile phone, Palm Pilot and laptop computer when we travel will seem
antiquated and silly. Our single device will have capabilities of all
those devices (though certainly it won't be capable of doing everything
that a laptop can).
Very soon, we'll see phone handsets with larger screens and Palm
Pilot-like capabilities capable of handling your address
book/rolodex, calendar and to-do list, as well as e-mail and Web
surfing. Handset manufacturers like Ericsson already have working
prototypes of phones with larger, horizontal screens that run the length
of the phone body. These will very soon make capable news readers and
personal organizers, eliminating the need to carry a PDA as well.
(Ericsson's RR380 phone/PDA device is due to hit the market in September
or October, according to Ericsson Canada VP Gary Connell. He
predicts that within two years, his company's mobile devices will have
enough capabilities that many business travelers will leave their
laptops at home.)
The reasons these future-generation phones will work as multi-functional
devices are the high-bandwidth Internet connections, and their future
user interface which will be voice activated. Benditt predicts
that such a device eventually will also have commonly used software
applications built in, so that you could do word processing on your
mobile device by talking to it. And because such futuristic devices will
operate under a ubiquitous technical standard (like today's WAP, for
instance), they will integrate with other devices a consumer may use.
Probably the most popular future consumer device will be the phone/PDA
combo, says Vin Crosbie, a consultant advising publishing
companies on wireless trends and president of Digital Deliverance. He
thinks that savvy consumers of the near future will carry the phone/PDA,
plus a second, larger portable reading device.
He predicts that portable tablet devices successors to today's
e-book readers, possibly utilizing 'digital ink' technology for
lightweight, high-resolution screens will evolve to become
replacements for the laptop computer. So, news consumers might interact
with news publishers via either their small (phone/PDA) or tablet
devices. News companies, then, need to be prepared to deliver content to
both.
Three flavors of content
Delivering to a multitude of digital media really isn't as bad as it
sounds. Crosbie suggests that news publishers think about creating three
types of content, which will serve any digital media that a publisher
wishes to serve:
Headlines and blurbs, for devices with tiny screens,
like today's wireless Internet phones. Articles, for devices
with screens big enough to comfortably read full stories, such as
palmhelds and phone/PDA combos, or tiny screens on airline seats.
And publications, for devices like desktop and laptop
computers, and wireless tablets that can present a publication or Web
site in its full presentation format and content.
Just concentrate on producing your company's content in those forms,
Crosbie says, and you should be able to support any digital media device
that emerges in the future.
(News publishers also might concentrate on audio versions of their
content, for the growing number of portable MP3 players appearing in
consumers' hands. Poynter Institute faculty member Chip Scanlan
uses a Diamond Rio portable MP3 player, which he thinks is a compelling
device that should gain in popularity. He uses it for audio versions of
books, and for content from news publishers like The Economist.
Publishers should think about their content being heard as audio files
by MP3 users on their portable players or in their cars.)
How immediate is the threat?
My advice to publishers is to act today on the process of supporting the
new digital formats that will be used to consume news. Today's devices
don't seem like much of a threat, because they remain in a crude state.
Wireless Internet phones present only a few lines of text. Palmheld
devices are fine for reading articles, but they aren't terribly
compelling when trying to read an entire publication.
Andrew Nachison, director of the Media Center at the American
Press Institute, says today's devices simply aren't compelling enough to
draw large numbers of readers away from the printed page yet. He views
Palm Pilots and their ilk as an intermediate step, for instance, toward
a more useful device yet to hit the market. But he also believes that
they represent a significant future threat to newspapers so
publishers should be planning now for moving their content into the wild
world of digital communications devices.
Don't panic! It really won't be that bad.
Other recent columns
In case you missed recent Stop The Presses!, here are links to
the last few columns: The
Next News Platform: E-book Readers, Wednesday, July 12 Small
Daily Paper, Big Online Profit Goals, Wednesday, July 5 It
Takes Killer Content To Generate Killer Revenue, Wednesday, June
28
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Got a tip? Let me know about it If you have a newsworthy item
about the online news/interactive news media business, please send me a
note.
This column is written by Steve
Outing for Editor & Publisher Online. Tips, letters and feedback
can be sent to Steve at steve@planetarynews.com
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This column is written by Steve Outing for Editor & Publisher Online.
Tips, letters and feedback can be sent to Steve at
steve@planetarynews.com.
(c) Copyright 2000, Editor & Publisher
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