Paperless Presses
By Neil Dodds
24 April, 2006
More news on the progress of digital paper editions, which we reported on earlier this year. The Herald Tribune reports that Belgian daily De Tijd's experiment (which started this month) will soon be joined by digital paper offerings from Les Echos (France), the New York Times and industry thinktank body IFRA.
The International Herald Tribune (IHT), now owned by the New York Times, is also in talks to create a trial "digital ink" edition using the same Irex technology De Tijd has been using.
De Tijd's experiment began earlier this month, when 200 readers taking part in the trial received their Iliad readers. The devices - smaller than a newspaper page, with a low-power paper-thin screen - can download the newspaper and regular updates via an internet connection.
The newspaper's team is watching its readers' habits closely - but telecoms groups, advertising agencies and academics are also observing the study, in the hope of integrating their findings into a workable business plan.
On the face of it, it shouldn't be hard, at least when the price of the reading devices, now more that $400, comes down to a price more appealling to users. $100 has been proposed as a suitable sum - and publishers might be expected to bear some of the costs, because they'll be making savings in newsprint and distribution. Newsprint alone is said to cost newspapers $150 per reader per year.
While the De Tijd experiment is interesting, it's still some distance from the folding digital paper with colour and video images that films like The Minority Report have prepared us for. Indeed, according to the IHT, some of the smarter money is holding out until rollable or colour digital paper arrives, perhaps next year. An industry consultant adds that flexible paper, that can be folded into a pocket after reading and reused for downloading the following day, is only two years away. A "page" that will last three months before needing replaced might cost as little as $10.
Naturally, it won't be enough to simply post the print edition of the newspaper onto the digital presses. Les Echos, a Paris business paper owned by the FInancial Times group, plans to introduce website-style elements to its digital paper edition. Other French newspapers planning to join in the trial, such as sports daily L'Equipe, tabloid Le Parisienne and the country's "paper of record" Le Monde doubtless have their own ideas for editions which can, in theory, be updated as regularly as a website.
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