Stuff you can still only get from newspapers

Believe it or not, there is still stuff (and I choose to use this ugly word on purpose) that you can only get from newspapers.

As I've written about before, the move of news onto the Internet has killed a lot of the design elements that make print products so great.

In a Slate article about reading newspapers on a Kindle, I found many of the same arguments. The Kindle is a great idea, except that instead of giving straight-up Web news, or the print version on the screen, it offers a third form that takes the worst from both.

One of the main reasons Web news is great is because it's instantaneous, but the Kindle misses that by only updating once a day. So, it ruins the whole point of getting the newspaper on a screen, unless you're just trying to keep your hands clean of newsprint. You're still getting old news.

And even if you love the print version but just want to see it an electronic format, you can't get that from the Kindle, either. Subscriptions on the Kindle deliver the news in a unique format, without the aesthetic appeal of good graphics, carefully designed pages or (and most important) the editorial input found with headlines of different sizes and stories placed with specific prominence.

As much as people argue that they want to be able to pick and choose their own news, what they usually mean is that they want sources where they can find the news they want. They don't mean that they want their news streaming across a screen in all one size font with no breaks, headlines or editorial input such as graphics and slightly sensational headlines. (Although no online or electronic reader sources...except for maybe Drudge report...go to the extreme of no design, it's fair to say there's some serious lack of design creativity on the Web and electronic readers.)

Basically, electronic and Web news is now like newspapers were hundreds of years ago, in the days of smooshed text and multiple decks. The hope is that the revolution to the modern version of print, with beautiful graphics, clean spacing and a laid-out page that makes navigating the news easy, will come soon to these new media.

Here's a grand idea: Just put the print versions on the Kindle, and fill in the different news holes with updates throughout the day. The shock! The difficulty! What, keep using a good model? And there could be advertising on these pages as well? No! It cannot be done!

I have no clue why newspapers are not moving toward their own readers, which could do this and, in turn, save their beautiful printed pages by having them transposed onto a screen.

And remember, Amazon takes 70 percent of all subscriptions run on the Kindle. 70 percent. What do the newspapers have to lose?

Good news for news

I seem to be posting a lot about the newspaper industry, but I've found something I think is very encouraging for those who love journalism and want to keep viable news sources alive. Note that I'm saying "news sources," not newspapers. (I was sitting by the Charles River near Harvard yesterday and had my broadsheet blown into a tissue paper-like ball of messy ink, and thus my distaste for the massive, hard-to-read medium grows, although I love the source.)

One of the hardest things for me to swallow as newspapers fall is not only that these great institutions are failing but that the presentation of news on the Web is mediocre. It's harder to read, comes at you more frequently and is often shorter. That's just the way it is with the Internet; no one is going to read a 5,000-word Vanity Fair profile online just for sport.

So, I laud any journalistic enterprises that can find a way to take the presentation of information as we know it right now, in newspapers and magazines, and get it — in full design glory — onto the Web.

Several magazines are putting their actual layouts online, and they flip like a real magazine. I think this is awesome. You get the full presentation, complete with great layouts and colors, and don't have to read it as a standard Web piece. The superior design also helps you sit through the longer articles, even though it's still a pain to read a lot from a screen.

The other alternative is the waves the Detroit Free Press is making with its online newspaper, an e-edition now available, since the paper version isn't printed a couple days a week anymore. People said this signaled the path toward death for the newspaper, but readership has actually increased, and the online version has attracted more people, according to Poynter. Even better, the Detroit people are uploading whole broadsheets for viewing fun, which means, once again, that the design is preserved.

(With newspapers, the layout is especially important, because this is where these great news organizations show their editorial prowess. A front page story is still a front page story, and where they place the articles as you go through an edition shows you how they rank news value. This role — of the news source setting the tone and importance of news as well as giving "just the facts" (we hope) — is one that the Internet is taking away. While the democratization is good on some levels (meaning people get to pick their own news), a lot of us still want to know what the New York Times thinks is the most important story of the day.)

I'm encouraged by these online versions, meaning that although we may have to ditch newsprint, we can still keep the art form alive. I've even heard rumblings that we may be going back to multi-edition days, like in the early 20th century, as e-editions are easier to produce and news changes throughout the day.

But hardly any newspapers or magazines are doing this. The Kindle2 was released this week, and everyone went crazy about how it was going to be great for newspapers — but all it the new Kindle does is give people a larger screen to read the same stuff. Some new forms to disseminate news are under way at the New York Times and the Boston Globe, but newspapers have yet to take control of a device like the Kindle and make it an essential for getting their news.

My suggestion? Use the Kindle, or another device, but make news packages that are way superior to what you can get on the regular Internet, whether it is from your organizations' Web site or the blogging cess pools. Hand out some of these free devices, or get people to buy them (whatever), but make the news packages only available on these devices. Make them so cutting edge that they'll be a go-to place for all your business, a step up from a newspaper you can pack in your bag and the Blackberry you tuck in your pocket. (This is a brief sketch. I have the entire plan under lock and key.)

It sounds expensive, but news organizations need to start the move toward being multi-serving news sources, or it's all going to be over soon.