I wrote previously about Star Dispatches, an e-book subscription service being produced by the Toronto Star. According to this article on The Star's website, they're being recognized for this series with two Online Media Awards. The service has an intriguing set-up where, for a nominal fee, subscribers get a new e-book sent to them every week. There is no à la carte purchase, but the weekly fee is so affordable that subscriber retention has been high. From the admittedly self-congratulatory write-up: "We’re extremely proud of the stories being told in our weekly eRead format, our subscribers are highly satisfied and the business model has...

* Editor's Note: The end of this post contains a minor House of Cards spoiler. Photographer Will Steacy has a photo essay on his online portfolio called 'Deadline;' I've seen it pop up on several blogs this past week. In the essay, Steacy memorializes the newsroom of the Philadelphia Inquirer, from their first buyout in 2009 through their move from the iconic 'Tower of Truth' office tower and into a single-floor office at the top of an old department store. Some of the photos, such as the before-and-after of the old newsroom—full of desks and phones and people, and then an empty shell—are...

My mom is a pack rat, which as everyone knows can be frustrating for friends and family trying to help bring order to accumulation. The upside of pack rattery is there are always gems scattered among the detritus of domesticity, and so it was last week, when I discovered at her house a box full of old newspapers originally saved for their historic headlines. There, in yellow newsprint, was the moon landing, Nixon's and Agnew's resignations and the 1972 Arab-Israeli war. And Senator Robert F. Kennedy's assassination: Two papers from June 6, 1968—one, the morning New York Times, with a headline proclaiming...

Last week The New York Times gave me an offer I couldn't refuse: 12 weeks of digital access for $5. No, that's not $5 per week. That's $5 for the entire 12-week period. See why I couldn't refuse? I'd been reading the Times' Top News on Flipboard for months, and I knew I liked it in that format. Now that I have access to the entire paper for a few months, I decided to try out the native Android and iOS apps and see which I liked better. Note that I purchased Tablet access, so I didn't test this out on my...

I read a great article today by Matthew Ingram where he explains the current difficulties facing the news media as a 'barbell' problem--entities on either side of the barbell are going to be just fine, he argues. It's the people in the middle who are going to get squeezed! Ingram's theory is this: If you are a top gun, like, say, the New York Times, you'll be fine, because you have both resources to fund new ventures and cash flow to wait it out until you see which of those ventures stick. Similarly, if you are a small-town paper--the other end of the barbell--where "forces...

Ebooks: Newspapers should capitalize on their archives (The Guardian) Bookstore browsing vital for publishing, research finds (The Bookseller) Are African writers and readers ready for the e-book revolution? (The Creative Penn) Short Books + Fast Books (and Diet) = Indie Success (Publishing Perspectives) Kindle Daily Deals: Timequake by Kurt Vonnegut (and 3 others)...

A blog post by freelance journalist Nate Thayer has been making the rounds this week. In the post, Thayer shares an exchange he had with an editor at The Atlantic, who wanted to republish a significantly shortened version of a feature story he'd written about Dennis Rodman's recent publicity trip to North Korea. When Thayer inquired as to payment, he was rebuffed and told the exposure of appearing in their publication would be payment enough; Thayer, a working professional, was offended and the story lit up the blogosphere. Lost in the righteous indignation was the smaller detail, revealed by Thayer himself,...

I about wet myself after opening up the February 18 issue of New York magazine, after which I immediately flipped to the often imitated (but never duplicated) Approval Matrix. There it was, right down in the furthest corner of the Brilliant/Lowbrow axis: Liberal-arts rockers Vampire Weekend show their allegiance to print by announcing their new album title in the N.Y. Times classifieds. Don't get me wrong: I realize we're all media-savvy enough to recognize this sort of thing as a clever marketing ploy, and nothing more. But therein lies the basis of my excitement ... and the overarching point of this post. Let me...

Canadian Businesses Lobby for Right to Infect Computers with Rootkits and Viruses (Boing Boing) Newspapers That Aren't Dying: 4 Success Stories and 4 Lessons (Paid Content) Hearst Digital Magazines to Undergo Rapid Transformation (Good e-Reader) Licensing Controversy: Balancing Author Rights with Societal Good (The Scholarly Kitchen) Kindle Daily Deals: A Patch of Ground by Michael Archer (and 3 others)...

A daily Japanese newspaper, the Tokyo Shimbun, has recently launched an app that allows children to scan specially-marked articles with their smartphone, which then reveals various kid-friendly content related to the article. An anime character, for instance, might pop up on a child's smartphone screen and explain the article in kid-friendly terms. Various graphics and pop-up headlines may also be revealed. The app, AR News, was developed by a Japanese firm known as Dentsu, which was contracted to create a solution that would make newspapers, and newspaper reading, more enjoyable to children. To use the app, a child simply has to find an...

A Publisher's Year: Rebooting the Book (National Post) Over a Third of eReaders Are Used Just Once (The Digital Reader) . eBooks and the Race to Publication (Good E-Reader) Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Acquires Award-Winning Culinary Program (Daily Finance) Kindle Daily Deal: Robert Kroese's Mercury Trilogy {and} The Named by Marianne Curley * * * Follow us @TeleRead  Join us on Facebook...

Editor's note: On Monday, Joanna Cabot told us about the Toronto Star's recent announcement that it would soon be moving its online content behind a paywall. I'm guessing the news must have come as a particularly painful double-punch in Canada, where the The Globe & Mail—perhaps the finest daily newspaper in the country—rolled out a paywall of its own on October 22.  In the Toronto Star today, columnist Rosie Dimano sounds off on the announcement this week that the paper is moving to a paywall for online content. On the negative side, Rosie is a bit of an old curmudgeon type, and admits she's...