Newspaper Innovation
The stories of newspapers dying is written almost every day on web publications. Yet some mainstream media companies continue to innovate and offer their content in a variety of forms for the web-conscious reader. Apart from creating nicely designed and navigation-friendly website powered by customizable RSS feeds, there are a host of applications that enable you to read their content on devices like the Kindle and the iPhone. New York Times in spite of its troubles has managed to churn out innovative products. Its iPhone app is one of the best for the device and I read it almost every day; sometimes even in bed.
If you still prefer to read your news on the desktop and Google News is too clunky for you, then you’ll love the Article Skimmer from the New York Times. It lets you browse article summaries and when you click on one to read more, it opens up in a Lightbox that opens up the article from the website without leaving the skimmer. But still, it is a roundabout way of reading the similarly-styled content in a different box.
The latest offering The NYT TimesReader 2.0 is one of the coolest app I’ve seen from a traditional media company. It is powered by Adobe Air and is styled almost like a print newspaper giving it a friendly familiar feel [via Mashable]. You can view the columns in a multiple column format complete with embedded images accompanying the story. It is a vast improvement over the clunky and slow ePapers that most Indian newspapers experimented with. It combines the easy of the web with hyperlinks and all with the visual feel of a newspaper. What’s more, it updates in real time. I’m resisting to paste screen captures here as the beauty of the app can only be experienced firsthand. Will they also extend the same look to their web-only features like the NYT blogs?
Blogging and web2.0 doesn’t have to threaten the traditional journalism medium. In fact, it only offers them newer and more powerful tools to expand their readership. Of course, the little thing of monetizing their content still remains elusive.
Update: It looks like a majority of the content including op-eds, international news, and even the science section is open only to regular subscribers ($3.45 a week). The website remains free so I guess if you like to read an enhanced version of the print newspaper online, you still have to pay as much as you would for the actual print edition. Personally, I wouldn’t mind a few ads including image ads for the convenience of free news. But as they say, the best things out there are not free.
Update#2: Chyetanya Kunte who knows quite a bit about usability and design feels that such apps are a waste and the newspapers should instead focus on re-designing their website. Since he doesn’t enable comments but has trackbacks, let me voice my concern with that issue here. Aren’t different standards and rendering engines the bane for most designers? Add to that the different resolutions, browsers, platforms, and even people who access the same website. Although I’m no web designer but I would consider it hellish for the designer to get the feel and usability of the TimesReader on a browser. Thoughts?
