“As we move into 2008, we will be rethinking coverage priorities and how we use our space and our people, but always in ways that preserve what The Times does best. In the future, as in the past few months while these matters were under review, we have worked closely with our partners on the business side, with a single shared ambition: to seek cutbacks and reductions that are as strategically focused as possible, and do nothing to damage our core journalism.”

This announcement shows that no publication is stable enough to survive the transition from print to web completely intact.

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“We are studying it and we expect to make that free, and instead of having one million, having at least 10 million-15 million in every corner of the earth,” Mr. Murdoch said, referring to The Journal’s online readership.”

“Music and video have been digital for a long time, and short-form reading has been digitized, beginning with the early Web. But long-form reading really hasn’t.”

The question begging to be asked is, ‘Are people ready to add yet another device to their already stuffed briefcases and bags?’ Most people today have a slew of devices they are required to lug around – cell phones, laptops, mp3 players – so why one more?

After all, this is the book we’re talking about. “If you’re going to do something like this, you have to be as good as the book in a lot of respects,” says Bezos. “But we also have to look for things that ordinary books can’t do.” Bounding to a whiteboard in the conference room, he ticks off a number of attributes that a book-reading device—yet another computer-powered gadget in an ever more crowded backpack full of them—must have.

Though e-book readers are nothing new and have little spread within the literary consumer market, Kindle does have a few tricks up their sleeve. By taking lessons from newer technologies such as the Apple iPhone, Kindle is tapping into the market through WiFi and massive storage space.

The Kindle’s real breakthrough springs from a feature that its predecessors never offered: wireless connectivity, via a system called Whispernet. (It’s based on the EVDO broadband service offered by cell-phone carriers, allowing it to work anywhere, not just Wi-Fi hotspots.) As a result, says Bezos, “This isn’t a device, it’s a service.”

Even so, WiFi is on the verge of becoming a standard ‘fixture’ in electronic devices. Is it so important for readers? What market of people are willing to add this device to their inventory – or, better said, is this technology catering to the gadgetless (such as my grandmother), which means that it will soon be obsolete once other providers (like Apple and the iPhone) allow access to this type of material easily through their proprietary service?

While looking at the photos and specs, my initial thought was, “man that’s big.” Granted, it’s about as thick as a pencil, but for an electronic device, it took me back to the days of the Apple Newton (image from www.engadget.com):

Unfortunately, as cool as the Newton was in those days, it wasn’t something you could just chuck into your bag and go, it required space, which is why the PDA took on an entirely different evolutionary track. So, I guess my point is, why re-invent the wheel? Why not push those already promoting the products (and doing a wonderful job at it) to sign on to what you foresee the device accomplishing?

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Though do-it-yourself publishing is now available through services such as Lulu.com, Google’s vision takes on a very different user-generated content model. In the article, Google looking at DIY Magazine Publishing, puts together coherent details of the project:

You will have the ability to create your own ‘customize publication’ that contains the content (and advertising) that you have chosen. There is the ability to search content to add to your ‘personalized’ publication as well as suggestions generated through user history. The system can track a given topic a user is monitoring and update/suggest new related content as it becomes available. Content could also be searched by price, topic and dates for example, or any other information ‘deemed to be useful to either a user and/or a content provider in locating content to be provided in a customized publication’. You could also set updates on a given frequency (weekly, monthly) and set which content items you wish to have updated for that given period.

Overall, the idea seems more like a novelty than an actual product. Considering Google’s constant drive to gather up as much content as it can get it’s crawlers to capture, the aggregation side-note to this seems plausible for their business model. However, convincing the magazine subscriber that this model is ‘better’ because of its customizability will create a challenge. And in all seriousness, who wants to take the time to physically publish information that is probably available through online subscriptions. We’ll have to see how this plays out – if it ever does…

From the article Yahoo’s Newspaper Alliance Adds Major Player:

For newspapers, the Yahoo partnership represents a comprehensive strategy for tackling the Web after years of losing circulation and classified ads to the Internet portals and free listings sites such as Craigslist. But the industry continues to suffer steep declines in readership.

The consortium has been the center of controversy since its inception last year. Many analysts believe that the growth experienced within the program thus far cannot sustain itself over a longer period of time.

But Borrell and other analysts warn that it will be hard for newspapers teaming with Yahoo to sustain high growth rates over time. “They’ve basically relinquished ownership of the help-wanted advertising franchise,” Borrell says. “HotJobs now owns it in those markets because it’s merely using the newspapers to build up the HotJobs brand.”

The New York Daily News is but one of nearly 400 newspapers that have joined the consortium.

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“We designed the BookSnap for people who have always wanted to digitize their personal libraries but haven’t had a viable way to do it – until now,” said Nick Warnock, president, Atiz Innovation. “We sat down and said, ‘Can we innovate reading?’ How do we take what we are doing with our professional products and make a version tailored to the consumer?’ The result gives archival power to everyone, and changes the way people convert and access their books collections.”

The greater-than $1,500 price tag may still be a deterrent for the average consumer, however, we can expect to see distribution of these ‘digital copies’ take off just as we did with the onset of the mp3. In addition, copyright will become a greater issue for publishers as well as those who take it upon themselves to scan and distribute their personal libraries.

Though a consumer-grade book scanner may be the answer for family historians or personal archivists with the intent to preserve and share their microcosmic histories, a device of this kind is bound to cause havoc and we can expect discussions about digital rights management to flourish. The main question that needs to be asked of Nick Warnock, president of Atiz, is “Are you going to take responsibility for illegal content distribution and the lawsuits that follow? Or, are you going to take responsibility for the product you are releasing and become involved in the fight for DRM reform?”

Gary Pruitt, McClatchy’s chairman and chief executive officer, said “The challenging business environment, coupled with the drag on our stock price, has resulted in our taking an impairment charge to write down the value of goodwill, mastheads of certain newspapers, and other assets on the company’s balance sheet in the third quarter. However, these are non-cash accounting charges, and nothing about them changes our operations or our ability to reduce debt.

When McClatchy took on Knight-Ridder for a total of $6.4 billion, the company assumed an additional $2 billion in debt. Not only did McClatchy possibly over-pay for the acquisition, but the mortgage crisis has affected ad revenues, particularly in the states of California where some of their major holdings, like the Sacramento Bee, reside. In addition, McClatchy owns nearly 50% of the Seattle Times, which the company valued at about $102 million at the time of the Knight-Ridder purchase, however, on Monday a report listed the publication’s value at a mere $19 million, reflecting a drop of nearly 80%.

The services offered include scanning documents, converting film-based medium, such as VHS to DVD, as well as digitizing content.

“The idea behind our Preservation Package was to provide a much broader dimension into helping people preserve their family legacy. With thousands of printed photographs and old videos that can become damaged or deteriorate, it only made sense for us to offer a service that allowed people to convert their items to a digital format. It has never been easier nor more cost effective to do that than today,” said Scott Spencer, Call Center Manager, WorldVitalRecords.com. “Customers can experience the piece of mind knowing their precious memories are safe and secure. Best of all, they can share them with family and friends quickly and easily, anywhere, any time, online through FamilyLink.com.”

These services are beginning to become a staple to genealogy research accessibility and community-based projects. However, in the preservation industry, the digital medium is still the subject of heated debate when it comes to preservation standards. Ones and zeros can be lost instantly due to human error, which DVDs are highly susceptible to, not to mention the quality of the actual disk.

“The newspaper advertising market in Chicago continued to be very tough,” Chief Executive Cyrus Freidheim told the analysts. “We are simply not where we wanted to be in the third quarter.”

The [voluntary] separation program includes a cash severance component and a health care benefit component. It will result in a fourth-quarter 2007 buyout charge of approximately $3 million to $3.3 million and is expected to yield annual savings of about $3.9 million to $4.3 million beginning in 2008.

The company announced the program in October of this year, hoping to cut staff in order to allow for change within the newspaper industry and the Sentinel’s place within. Though, as stated in the above article clip, the company hopes to eventually eliminate a total of 100 staff members.

As the newspaper industry continues to show decline in subscriptions and advertising revenue, buyouts, lay-offs and staff-cuts will continue to effect the journalism community as well as the publishing industry as a whole. However, with web traffic rising, publications have the opportunity to re-align with current trends and the online community.