the buzz log
Newspapers, e-Readers and Billionaire Doomsayers...Oh My
Billionaire investor Sam Zell said he "made a mistake" buying the Tribune Co. and that the "future of the newspaper industry is at risk today." Sumner Redstone, a broadcast billionaire whose father sold papers in Boston, said that while he would never die, newspapers would. Warren Buffett, who aired his doubts about the newspaper industry back in 1992, confirmed lately that his holding company wouldn't invest in the foolscap biz "at any price."
As if the litter of dead or wounded newspapers weren't enough, the stinging dismissal from the billionaire boys' club is wounding indeed. The only thing missing is Donald Trump claiming his hair would outlast newspapers and be a source of renewable energy to boot.
Of course, they're not attacking the message so much as the anachronistic medium: Plenty of eyeballs still read the news, but there hasn't been a good way to figure out how to keep the news going without starving journalists. There have been no shortage of answers (or failed solutions). Now, a bigger, buffer Kindle DX from Amazon ($489 retail, summer release) has spurred hopeful speculation that this will be the really cool device to encourage people to read (and pay) for information.
That school of thought is sort of equivalent to the iPod-as-savior model...although the music industry's not doing that well. Blogs like ReadWriteWeb and Crunch Gear have shot down the Kindle-as-newspaper-platform model almost as fast as traditional media can float the idea. And indeed, the New York Times threw out the proposal of Amazon as "electronic life preserver to old-media companies," only to trample it the very next day. Of course, the NYT company almost closed down a major newspaper itself, which just encourages not-so-idle billionaire chatter.
The Kindle, still without color or video, might have to find a savior itself. Wired reports not one but two threats: Plastic Logic's lightweight, letter-sized touchscreen sheet due out in 2010 and, even worse, rumors of Apple building a tablet-sized iPhone. So far, infamous technophobes Redstone and Buffett haven't spoken on that topic yet. But they probably know—they read newspapers every day.
Filed under: Tech, Apple Computer, Business, Books, Media, Newspapers, iPhone
Look Ma, No Ink on My Hands: Digital Mag Means Future's Almost Here
Imagine a rack that holds only one magazine, but the issue magically updates every month. Or every time you pick up the newspaper, the news has changed.
That future is kind-of-but-not-quite-here with Esquire's 75th anniversary edition and its E-Ink digital display cover. Well, it's not the entire cover, and tecchies have sniffed at the unveiling. Portfolio describes the unit as "only a little bigger than a credit card, and about as flexible." The gadget boys at Boing Boing aren't only underwhelmed, they're "outraged by the design's tackiness, the bereavement of imagination, the lack of class..." The blog goes on to kick some more dirt into the face of "dying" print journalism.
Still, in the clubby sluggish world of publishing, a beginning's a beginning (or, as the publisher put it, version 1.0 is version 1.0). Esquire tells of the 7,000-mile journey to get the issue developed (at least the display unit is recyclable). Like many, Make magazine promptly disemboweled the cover to reveal its 21st-century innards.
The next evolution may not come shrinkwrapped in a magazine, but be tossed on the front steps as a newspaper... or newsscreen, as the case may be. A British company called Plastic Logic debuted a plastic screen double the size of the Amazon Kindle or Sony eReader. PaidContent reports that the device, which also uses E-Ink technology, can be updated wirelessly. (A big investor in E-Ink: Hearst Interactive, which owns Esquire, newspapers, and other media.)
The New York Times explores some implications of a Plastic Logic future, such as cost savings for daily news publishers and privacy concerns for readers, but no insight as to how birds used to having their cages lined with newspaper will feel about the death of newsprint. Feathered friends, messy collectors, news junkies, and technology critics can judge in 2009, when the British-made gizmo hits shelves.
Filed under: Reading, News, Magazines, Media, Newspapers
top movers
| Rank | Subject | 1-Day Move |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ford 400 | Breakout! |
| 2 | Indonesia Ferry | Breakout! |
| 3 | Jordan Chandler | 3481% |
| 4 | Evan Chandler | 2322% |
| 5 | American Music Awards | 1841% |
| 6 | John F. Kennedy | 1529% |
| 7 | Turkey Stuffing Recipes | 1361% |
| 8 | Liam Hemsworth | 1172% |
| 9 | Lou Dobbs | 1142% |
| 10 | Hendrick Motorsports | 888% |
top leaders
| Rank | Subject | Move | Score |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Black Friday | +340 | 1290 |
| 2 | NFL | +489 | 670 |
| 3 | Jennifer Lopez | +451 | 515 |
| 4 | New Moon | -67 | 250 |
| 5 | American Music Awards | +236 | 249 |
| 6 | UFC | -36 | 239 |
| 7 | Miley Cyrus | +66 | 169 |
| 8 | Hulu | -11 | 154 |
what's the buzz?
A subject's buzz score is the percentage of Yahoo! users searching for that subject on a given day, multiplied by a constant to make the number easier to read. Weekly leaders are the subjects with the greatest average buzz score for a given week.
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