How electronic reading panes are going to change the very nature of the business

Now that the e-ink technology is maturing, the newspaper industry has decided that the time has come for serious testing and application. To mention a few: the French financial daily Les Echos is kicking off with a field test this month and the Italian La Repubblica is about to do the same. The Chinese Yantai group is already deploying electronic reading devices for over a year and the Dutch national dailies NRC and Volkskrant are finishing the last preparations for a test phase involving over a thousand readers. In the United States, 25 plus dailies are joining forces in a digital publishing alliance to explore the future potential of the technology (see contribution 1 for a brief e-reader introduction).

Are you perhaps missing something? Yes you are, you as well as all the frontrunners mentioned above: appropriate content. Most experimentation took and takes place using the trusted print content, converted for electronic reading. That will never do the job. What is mostly needed in this phase are newly developed editorial formats especially designed for the generations of e-reader hardware which now are coming to the market: the e-ink based readers that iRex and Sony have launched, but also the range of ultra-thin PCs and even the PSP game consoles (if one wants to include the youth in this innovation venture). Five Dutch papers are now picking up the gauntlet with a joint project to develop original journalistic formats for mobile newspaper reading.

The Dutch-Flemish e-reader cooperation initiative entails national titles: De Volkskrant, Financieele Dagblad, a national free paper, SP!TS, a regional newspaper, Eindhovens Dagblad and a local title, Barneveldse Krant. From the research side EC/DC (the European Centre for Digital Communication) coordinates the project while the IBBT (Flemish research umbrella, responsible for the e-paper De Tijd project) delivers multiple expertise. A substantial part of the project budget comes from the Dutch Bedrijfsfonds (a newspaper development fund).
The vision of this multi-party group is that the classical paper will gradually shrink from broadsheet over tabloid to a magazine format, and the electronic counterpart will have the reverse development curve, from tiny cell phone screens, via the present 8 inch-panels of the e-readers to ultimately the same magazine size, full colour, flexible, mobile, versatile. That will take another decade, but it clearly makes the case for thoroughly rethinking the journalistic newspaper approach.

The focus of the ‘MePaper’- project is on the development of novel journalistic formats, especially designed for electronic mobile reading. We have to leave ages of tradition in newspaper writing, lay-out and organisation behind us, if the trade doesn’t want to become obsolete. That challenge knows an uncertain outcome and can only be met in an experimental set-up. This is precisely what the MePaper-project will organise: a development lab in which journalists rather than scientists start playing with the opportunities modern displays and software are offering. Journalistic focus must here be understood in a broad sense: writing staff, subediting, lay-out as well as the interplay between editorial and commercial content.
The research partners will permanently be alongside, for ongoing reader testing of the prototype solutions and formats. Ultimately, the key for success lies at the user side, and the readers’ perspective, habits, preferences and assessments have to be factored in throughout the process. This method of collaborative development in itself is new for the profession and worth monitoring.

Then, the technology pitch. Although the e-ink devices are at the heart of the project, other hard- and software developments will be followed as well. The newly designed journalistic formats will be tested at three different devices: the iRex iLiad, being the most advanced e-ink mounted reader, but also on one or more of the present ultra-thin laptops several manufacturers are bringing to market and even a sideline to game consoles. They all have their specific use profile, and probably will have a dedicated market and distinguishable prime target group. Who knows, the older hard core paper readership will fall for the iLiad, while the young urban professionals will dash off with their miniPCs and the youth will read the news in between the cracking and rivalling at their PlayStation console.

The MePaper team will towards the end of the two-year project also look into the consequences of new electronic content for the best possible newsroom organisation model. If readers and reading become fully mobile, why on earth should one keep the content producers all physically together? Many pros and cons to be mentioned here, but newsroom organisation certainly will become a big issue.

For more information about the MePaper project, contact jan.bierhoff@ecdc.info

In the next and last contribution of this series an interview with Roger Fidler, the American media specialist who developed the earlier versions of the electronic tablet paper.

Source: written by Jan Bierhoff, Director of the European Centre for Digital Communication