Screaming Penguin

Cedric really likes his kindle and I can see why. I think Amazon really has pushed themselves into an iPod like position of dominance with the Kindle, and I can be counted among those saying, "Jesus Murphy, am I the only person who doesn't need a goddam handjob from my reading material?"" However, the newspaper markets problem isn't one that can be corrected by reducing delivery cost, or (to a large extent) improving reader experience. The problem is that "Information Retail" is a stupid business to be in when the delivery cost of information is now ~0. People have been bemoaning the deaths of local papers my whole life. Most cities now have just one daily paper. However, most cities have a leaflet of "content" printed daily. Even in a city with one paper, the competition isn't the USAToday, or TV. It is every other paper on the planet. Moving your paper to the web isn't going to help you if your paper is simply wire feed stories under a masthead. There will always be a demand for local interest stories, and I am sure that need will be filled, but I am not sure having a shovelware paper in every US city with a population of 15k+ is sustainable, or even desirable anymore. At the same time, when you realize your audience isn't your city, but the whole world, the "threat" of the internet becomes a HUGE boon. Look at the Seattle P-I or the Manchester Guardian: they went from being relatively small local papers to "International Household Name" status because they were producing quality content. The fact is, though, in a few years there will be drastically fewer mastheads out there. That, however, is only an adjustment for the fact that there have not been very many actual newspapers for years.