beyond 140 for @lewmoorman

FINALLY.
It's not been easy just to get in to post a comment.
"... stop printing in 6 months."
Radical, but very good for the print business to focus on.
"3. Get behind a digital reader." Yes, yes, yes. We can open huge markets and revitalize readership by making digital readers common sources for transmitting information.
"4. Give a free reader to all your subscribers. "
It makes huge sense to build a much larger readership to access and have as an available audience. From marketing perspective I think it makes great sense...from a populist point of view, it's great.
"6. Make the web work for you." probably most brilliant of the ideas, but they all are interrelated and each strengthens and feeds the other.

It's radical and it also might help all those dying newspapers and periodicals a new life, but also a whole new presence and way of reaching out and connecting to the community.

Sorry the commenting has been so hard. Not sure what is going on. Did you have to register? You should not have.

Thanks for the comments. Are you in print media? I am really curious what people inside the industry think of the general ideas here.

Lew, good points but a couple of things.... listening to music on my iPod is a much different experience than reading something like, "The New York Times," or "The New Yorker."

I read lots of stuff online - either on my iPhone or on my Mac.

But I still enjoy and like paper. The experience is different in one key way. Once I done with the paper based version of say, "The New York Times" or 'The Economist," I will toss it. Once I buy a CD from iTunes I keep it, mix it up with other music I have and listen to it over and over and over.

I don't read the magazine articles or the daily newspaper over and over and over.

I am not against an eReader; I just think we need to keep this all in stride and not lose site the nature of the content that you are addressing are fundamentally very different and have very different applications and user experiences.

Alan, i totally agree. That is why i still get the Times in paper. Web and kindle do not replicate the experience enough.

But, the current model does not work. It is too expensive and inefficient. This is why they need a big screen that can replicate the experience in some way.

Not sure why the permanency issue matters. So, it auto deletes after a few days, just like my tivo does with repeating shows.

Honestly, this is all inevitable. It is just a question of timing and who dominates it, the new or old media. I just would love to see the latter have a fighting chance.

One more thing... newspapers are not magazines are not books. Newspapers are being disrupted because breaking news is just that: it's breaking and immediate. We get our news via our iPhones, our computers, and many times through citizen journalism platforms like blogs and of course Twitter.

Newspapers were also disrupted by platforms like Craigslist and eBay.

I still contend that traditional magazines are a different animal, especially those that still provide great content (i.e. - "The New Yorker," "Forbes," "Rolling Stone," "Vanity Fair,") and a great reading experience. I read these magazines not only for the content, but also because I love the great visuals of the illustrations, photography and art. I love the advertising (which provides the revenues aside from subs).

All this to say is that some forms of print media are on their way out the door, but not all.

Good point. Traditional magazines also seem to have a more workable model - for now. But, in the long run, the experience on screen should surpass the experience on the page. Esquires digital ink cover this year is just the start. I too love magazines and consume them. I want them to survive!! If they don't do some things to adjust, they won't.

In the vernacular of Steve Jobs... "just one more thing...." Wanna read blogs like SlashDot, TechCrunch, or Gizmodo on the Amazon Kindle? They're $1.99 per month. Or, they're totally free on my Mac. "The New York Times" on my Mac: free.

So, for all the wonders of the Kindle, as in life, nothing is perfect.

I also think that companies of certain sizes and scale should really start seeing themselves as media companies in their own right. If they embrace and execute the social web right, then part of the attention grab for customers and partners could be in the vein of social communications, community building, content development, etc. on the buying and selling side of the equation.

Lew,

I agree, mostly.

Point #1: Agree. It's not as though there are many players left in the US newspaper industry.

Point #2: Newsprint is unsustainable in this day and age. What we're doing--harvesting timber and sending it to the landfill days later--makes no sense. Even more ridiculous when you consider that a large percentage of the output is never even read before being trashed. The only difficulty that I forsee in this elimination of newsprint is the labor unions.

Point #3: Here, I disagree. Forget about getting behind a digital reader. If the newspapers try to do hardware, it will surely suck. Instead, get behind a format. Embrace an open, unencumbered _standard_ for electronic delivery and let the market do the rest. Those that want a lap-size, ultra high resolution reader can buy one. The rest can read on their computers or on a more mass-market model.
Perhaps the format will be an extension to the already-open PDF; perhaps it will be something new entirely.

DRM must be eschewed. Forget it. Old news has no value. Instead, sell access to the feed. And, as you pointed out, the feed absolutely needs to be real-time.

Point #4: Sure, but don't lock me into this reader. I'm a high-end news consumer, a manic NY Times and New Yorker reader who wants the articles to look stunning when I pick them up. Let me splurge on the $1500 reader with the high-color screen. Likewise, don't lock out Kindle readers or people using native Windows clients, etc.

Point #5: I mostly disagree. It's not about owning the entire chain, it's about the content. Owning the chain is going to lead to proprietary formats and incompatible standards, just like we have now. Content is where the true value is at and the revenue model is this: present the ideal pay-to-view related content to the reader and do this in a manner that intrigues the reader without annoying them (read: no Google text ads). Incorporate the revenue model into the actual data format. There should be a standard, CONSISTENT method for offering up free and non-free related content.

Chris

I have found so many interesting thing in your blog and I really love that Keep up the good work