In my latest for the Guardian, I continue to explore Amazon.com’s Kindle e-book — and consider why the idea of paid content draws such derision from the digital priesthood.
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Nice piece for the Guardian.In both of your Kindle entries, you’ve brought up paying for content (published for the Kindle itself) where the original content is available for free on the original publisher’s Web site.I still maintain that the Kindle, given it’s grayscale display and need for a power source of some sort, is a step back from the Web and two steps back from the print product itself.However, you did get me thinking about what would make the Kinle-esque paid news content worthwhile.I would, personally, be happy to pay a flat monthly fee to have an electronic news digest created for me daily and delivered to my Kindle.For brevity’s sake, I’ll oversimplify this:Such a service would pull top national and international stories from papers of my choice, as well as magazines and wire services.The service would use an adaptive filter (similar to a ‘smart’ email spam filter) based on criteria I provide to find stories for me.Additionally, I’d like to be able to manually add in content from certain beats at certain papers.For the benefit of the industry:I’ve paid a subscription fee of some sort.That fee should pay for the third party handling the content delivery, as well as paying a small royalty or fee to the publications I’m getting information from.Additionally, by creating a profile defining what I want to read, marketers can target me for specific advertising (the lack of which I suspect is part of the pain felt in contemporary newsrooms).Finally, and maybe I think this way because I’m a visual journalist, the Kindle is worthless until I can see the pictures in all their glory…
Will: I suspect you’re right about what people will pay for — a customized news menu from many different sources. Vin Crosbie has written about this a few times, and I think you’re both on to something.As for the Kindle display … the type is beautiful (I’m basing that on having seen the Sony Reader), but you’re right there, too. Color, pictures and video are absolutely mandatory. Second generation? Third?