The future of publishing ?

December 9, 2008 by pmelcher.

There are newspaper websites, where a second staff of editors recapture what is in the print edition and put it on line, for free. Not really cost effective and a sure wait to shoot yourself in the foot. The recent massive layouts and bankruptcy filing are good indication that this hasn’t been a good idea. As the country, and the world, will see the rows of unemployment rise, it is quite predictable that paid readership will continue to drop.

In comes a great company out of England, Newspapersdirect. With a savvy and simple website, one can now read international newspapers right on their desktop without getting their hands dirty. For a simple monthly fee that allows you for a limited viewing of newspapers per month, $9.99 for 38 newspaper view a months for example, one can have an entire newsroom at home.

There are few things a great about this service. First,  it saves trees.second, you do not have to be stuck with subscribing to thousands of newspapers. like a newsstand, you pay for those you want to read that day. Third, you have access to thousand of newspaper worldwide, the same day ( that certainly beats a newsstand). Fourth, there is a nifty little application that allows you to quickly see all the images used in a newspaper at once.Five, their search engine is amazingly powerful. One can search for credit line in all the newspapers in one swoop. Six, you can view past edition in case you missed any.  Seven, you can save, email or print the pages that you would like to keep.

This website is a brilliant example of how technology can be extremely useful when implemented correctly. It is simple to use and efficient. Newspapers still get revenue from participating and can actually increase their readership by reaching far away places with no distribution cost. There is a good chance that they will start doing the same with magazines in the near future.

you can play around with it yourself at pressdisplay.com

Posted in Search, magazine, technology, newspaper, web 2.0, editorial, photojournalism, news | Print | 2 Comments »