The Newspaper as an ePaper
There are several Indian newspapers available online as ePapers, a digital imitation of the printed edition. From national newspapers like Times of India and The Hindu to regional language dailies like Malayala Manorama and Mathrubhumi have launched epaper versions. Nobody wants to be left behind in the race for eyeballs online.
While newspapers in the West are still grappling to find a solution to dipping revenues and coaxing readers to pay for news online, there are reports floating around about ToI starting to charge for it's epaper edition1.
Is it a good idea to charge readers for online news? I think yes. Is it a good idea to charge readers for ToI epaper (or any of the others on offer currently)? I don't think so. Wall Street Journal and NY Times can find readers who are ready to pay because they provide a great user experience on their websites and their content delivery applications like the ones for iPhone2.
The ePaper format used by the Indian newspapers is difficult to navigate, scan through and articles that otherwise might interest me are easily missed out. Putting the same thing in PDF format doesn't work for me either. They face the same issues of difficult navigation and hard-to-scan layouts. Moreover, in spite of the conveniences of broadband, I do not want to deal with the hassle of having the entire paper2 gourging up space on my inbox or my hard disk.
In short, I end up wishing I had the dead-trees-version with me or I use the website. The epaper format, as it currently stands, will not work as a paid service.
My advice to Indian newspapers: Please don't try to replicate the physical newspaper on the web. Digital is a new medium with its own idiosyncrasies. Embrace it and mould your product to harness its powers. Easier said than done, I must admit.
1 I couldn't find any official statement online. Found only a blog post hailing it as a great idea which I think it is not. ↵
2The NDTV iPhone app was released recently. I haven't used it yet but the screenshots look good. ↵
3 Why should I need the entire paper? Why cannot I get a personalized newspaper which focuses on areas that I'm interested in?
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