Arkansas paper going all digital

Concerns about whether this will work are valid. It's a bold experiment to be sure. The publisher, who has invested $12 million in iPads in this program, thinks this is the way to go. I think he genuinely cares about journalism and wants the ADG to continuing publishing indefinitely as a statewide news"paper." If it works, he's a genius. If it fails, it's bad for the future of the industry as a whole. There are lots of logistics and things that have to be done right in order for this to work. Time will tell. Also, although home print delivery is set to stop 6 days a week, the question is whether there will be some daily printing done for rack sales, at least in the Little Rock metro area. That I'm not sure of. If that's the case, that bolsters the need for the paper to still be produced by a copy desk.

 

Rack sales have fallen dramatically and been sharply curtailed in many markets. I don't think the paper will publish an edition daily. I could see some kind of shopper being put on racks on Thursday to capture the grocery ads and other retailers who want to get a circular out.

Good luck to them.

But if it works and the ADG does continue as a state wide paper then it will be competing for electronic revenues with the other, smaller papers in the state. One problem small papers are confronting is while they have pretty much a monopoly on the print product because they offer the only effective home delivery option the competition a state wide paper can effectively compete for a lot of the on-line business. As print revenues disappear the state-wide paper squeezes the smaller papers out.

 

A lot of info regarding the iPad program packed into this story:
Democrat-Gazette out to shift print readers to digital by '20

 

Didn't the iPad boom already get overtaken by the popularity of cellphones with big screens?

 

This guy seems sincere and I really hope it works, but 1) I don't think it will and 2) even if it does, what then? You've bought a few extra years of survival by teaching your aging and dying subscribers how to operate an Ipad?

 

Excellent post. Aren't iPad's pretty much unpopular? It's an 1,200 dollar computer or nothing.

 

No, iPad sales trends have held steady for a while thanks to the enterprise market. That’s part of the reason that Adobe is porting Photoshop to iOS (release expected later this year) (of course, Affinity already released its full photo-editing app for the iPad, so Adobe didn’t have a choice).

I’m typing this on an iPad Air 2 with a Logitech keyboard. When paired with a keyboard, it’s a decent laptop substitute and is significantly lighter than a laptop PC; the instant-on capability is great, too. There are things that oversize phones and $1,200 laptops just can’t do as well.

Once Taunted by Steve Jobs, Companies Are Now Big Customers of Apple

 

I love my iPad, but people doing just casual reading -- it seems like the phone has surged far ahead.

 

I was Austin recently and stopped at three stores trying to find an American-Statesman. None of them even had racks for newspapers.

 

Similar deal in Portland, Ore. No racks for the Oregonian in the handful of gas stations I checked (plus, you have to pay for full service if you get gas!)

It's getting to the point where it's not worth the hassle for retailers to carry single-copies.

 

I always thought it was a major gamble to let print fade away in the hopes that digital would pay the bills. I still think that. And I think one of the biggest things is that there remains so many ways to get around a firewall.

I know one thing -- I wouldn't spend a dime on a firewall that couldn't lock out outline.com queries.

I don't see anybody spending ad dollars like a Sunday advertising section would bring in, either. Boscov's alone kept Pennsylvania publishers in Gucci shoes for quite a while.

 

With advertisers fleeing print I don't think I don't think converting to digital is much of a gamble. The end is near.