In his most recent blog entry, British business journalist Adam Tinworth takes a look at the iPad and what it might mean for publishers and the journalism industry. He doesn’t feel it will “save the industry” because it simply isn’t a question of “saving” it as it currently stands—it needs to “evolve or die.”
But he does feel that it represents an opportunity for professional journalism to survive, if the opportunity can be properly seized. As to whether that can happen, however, he is somewhat less optimistic.
But let’s face it. We don’t have a good record here. We, as an industry, botched the transition online. We treated the internet as, at best, the poor cousin of the print title, to be filled with the left-overs from the established product and, at worst, a mere marketing device. Then, when the invention of the single most efficient information distribution mechanism mankind has yet come up with transformed our industry and its economics, we descended into panic. The attack of the snails, as Kevin Anderson characterised it at The Frontline Club the other week, managed to take us by surprise.
Tinworth feels that journalism’s best chance lies in looking at the iPad’s form factor and capabilities and tailoring a user experience to play to its strengths. What he fears will happen is publishers will fall into the trap of trying to create exact replicates of the book and magazine form factors and in the end fail to offer a compelling consumer experience.
As Tinworth points out, given the industry’s track record it is far too easy to be cynical. And the first signs of the news industry failing to “get” the iPad can already be found: the print division of the New York Times wants to charge a staggering $20 to $30 per month for the iPad version of the Times, lest it cannibalize subscriptions to their print version.
