My $225 Tablet PC: Why I'm axing my Washington Post subscription (e-book angles included)

My $225 Fujitsu Stylistic 3400 tablet arrived this week—a miser’s special, with XGA res, Win XP and a 6G drive. And I’m smoothly running Mobipocket, uBook, yBook, and a host of other programs on it. For e-booking, I’m using heavy fonts such as Britannica Bold since the screen lacks the contrast of more modern models. But other than that and a Win XP authentication problem—which the conscientious eBay seller will fix, so it’s clear this is a legal copy in name and fact—the old Fujitsu is fine. In the next week or so, I’ll have more to say about the Fujitsu and other low-cost used tablets for e-books. I even find that South Korea is using a modern version of my tablet in a digital textbook program. But the topic today is something else, a consequence of my purchase.

Thanks to the greater ease of reading e-newspapers on the Fujitsu than on my PDA, I’ll ax my Sunday subscription to the paper edition of the Washington Post (99 cents a week for new subscribers in my 22304 ZIP code in Alexandria, VA). A lesson for the book industry, too? When people go E in one medium, it’s at least a hint they’ll do the same in another. The more people forsake dead-tree newspapers for the Web, the wider the audience for e-books. Meanwhile I’d love to hear from people at the Post or other newspapers in response to what I’ll write below.

What I would buy from the Post

Unlike many people on the Net, I would pay the Post a reasonable amount for archival access if need be, a full-service mobile edition, and a truly customizable RSS feed, so that in one swoop I could get all the headlines I wanted—in fact, even full stories. I’d welcome a Post version of the Times Reader, too, if the same software also worked with the Times and other papers, ideally based on a standard like OpenReader or the IDPF‘s. Although you can subscribe to a downloadable Post digital edition, it is outrageously clunky compared to the Times Reader. A digital package for the Post, encompassing all these goodies, should cost no more than the $50 a year that the New York Times is charging for Times Select, which comes with premium content—except that Reader-style software should be free. For now, I’ll just use Firefox to read in the Post.

Here’s a little background. I’ve been subscribing to the Post for decades and, for the sake of nostalgia, maintained a Sunday subscription after I killed off the weekday one. But even with a less-than-perfect Post, it’s so more efficient to go through RSS headlines and not have to worry about throwing out the oft-irrelevant ad inserts and other sections that I never read in the first place. Just to give the whole story, I did approach the Post on behalf of OpenReader and its supposed first implementer (I’m no longer evangelizing), but I’d feel the same way with or without OR involved.

Digital revenue vs. the P kind

Meanwhile, I’d heartily recommend that the good people at the Post check out More Flawed Newspaper Logic in Joe Wikert’s Publishing 2020 Blog. He’s vice president and executive publisher in the Professional/Trade division of John Wiley & Sons, Inc., and I’m sure he has the book industry in mind, too, not just the newspaper business, when he talks of the need for new business models. Yesterday he pointed to the following words that Walter Hussman, publisher of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed:

“The Inland Cost and Revenue Study shows that newspapers will generate between $500 and $900 in revenue per subscriber per year. But a newspaper’s Web site typically generates $5 to $10 per unique visitor per year. It may be that newspaper Web sites as an advertising medium, and free news, just can’t generate the revenue to sustain a valued news operation.”

Blacksmith era fading away

Yes,” says Joe Wikert, “we all know that the subscriber model was a lot more lucrative to the newspapers than the freeloading website visitor model. I’m pretty sure that if someone could have prevented the combustion engine and automobile industries from launching, the horse transportation industry would have remained lucrative as well. That didn’t happen though, and like the blacksmiths of many years ago, the newspaper industry needs to acknowledge reality and move on.”

Anyone at L Street or another newspaper want to follow up with a reply to Joe W. and me? And when you do, please don’t write me off as just an early adopter. As shown by the OLPC project and Ubuntu‘s new embedded Linux initiative, tablet technology is going to get cheaper and cheaper, so that five years from now I may be able to buy a much-better tablet new for well under $100. Will the Post and other newspapers be ready when millions do then what I’m doing now? Along the way, the press should start thinking about about new opportunities, such as multimedia e-books pegged to the news and maybe even including ads. Or are newspapers too worried about preserving their buggy-whip side?

Evolution, not revolution

Granted, as a poverty-beat reporter eons ago at another paper, I, of all people, am aware that not everyone has computer skills or the necessary hardware or the inclination to read from a computer. And displays, yes, do have a way to go. So, no, I’m not calling for immediate dismantlement of the Post’s expensive presses. Beyond that, I’m fully aware of the fortune that the Post has invested in its online operation, one of the best and most popular on the Web.

Just the same, I find it vexing that the Post can’t at least pave the way for change by caring about little details such as a better organized, more complete mobile edition and easier-to-use RSS options, not to mention full archival access (reasonably priced if “free” isn’t possible—not the current $3 per article or whatever the charge is). Here’s hoping that the Post and similar publications can make it. In an era of big, obnoxious government, we need big newspapers as a countermeasure, aside from the fact that so many blogs start out with facts that the MSM digs up. Rather than dreaming of huge amounts of link money from Google—sorry, Mr. Hussman, that just isn’t going to cut it, given all the smart publishers who love the traffic that Google brings—newspapers should do a better job of adjusting to the needs of online readers and consider innovative offerings such as newsy e-books.