For a different perspective on print news, consider for a moment the vastly improved reading environment in your typical newspaper reader's home.
When visiting my Aunty, it was obvious why newspapers are favoured in her house. They had a big sun-room at rear, with big tables where numerous newspapers were found spread out in various stages of completion. One glance across the table provided immediate feedback on a range of headlines, pictures, and articles. You can instantly see how long a piece will take to read. So with coffee in hand, you sit down and enjoy the experience.
Newspapers when spread out on tables provide superior readability than a single screen tablet where scrolling and wrestling all the annoyances is a test of patience.
If someone invents a lightweight digital "book" the size of a newspaper but containing less pages, maybe 10 or 20 double-sided digital e-ink pages that can be turned like real pages, I believe people will buy it.
The spine would allow the book to lie flat on any page, like a ring-bound book. When you get to the end, obviously you could choose to load up the next 10 pages from that publisher, or switch to a different publication. Importantly, the book can be left open, laying around the house for the next person to wander in with their coffee, sit down and have a relaxing browse though stories both local and global. No annoyances, no pop-ups, no tracking how long it takes you to read a page or any of that nonsense.
Before we label regional people "outdated", perhaps consider they simply like better reading experiences with their morning coffee.
Paper UI beats digital in a lot of ways. I haven’t replaced my several-hundred book library with ebooks not because I love all these heavy, bulky objects, but because the UI of an ebook is a lot worse for anything but entirely linear cotton-candy fiction reading. It’s got (enormous) advantages on weight, searchability (… though, a good index is better IMO) and not needing separate large-print editions for some readers, but basically everything else about the UI is worse.
I’d be thrilled if ebook devices could somehow close that gap.
When visiting my Aunty, it was obvious why newspapers are favoured in her house. They had a big sun-room at rear, with big tables where numerous newspapers were found spread out in various stages of completion. One glance across the table provided immediate feedback on a range of headlines, pictures, and articles. You can instantly see how long a piece will take to read. So with coffee in hand, you sit down and enjoy the experience.
Newspapers when spread out on tables provide superior readability than a single screen tablet where scrolling and wrestling all the annoyances is a test of patience.
If someone invents a lightweight digital "book" the size of a newspaper but containing less pages, maybe 10 or 20 double-sided digital e-ink pages that can be turned like real pages, I believe people will buy it.
The spine would allow the book to lie flat on any page, like a ring-bound book. When you get to the end, obviously you could choose to load up the next 10 pages from that publisher, or switch to a different publication. Importantly, the book can be left open, laying around the house for the next person to wander in with their coffee, sit down and have a relaxing browse though stories both local and global. No annoyances, no pop-ups, no tracking how long it takes you to read a page or any of that nonsense.
Before we label regional people "outdated", perhaps consider they simply like better reading experiences with their morning coffee.